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A    FREE     LANCE 

BEING  SHORT  PARAGRAPHS 
AND  DETACHED  PAGES  FROM 
AN    AUTHOR'S     NOTE     BOOK 


BY 
FREDERIC  ROWLAND  MARVIN 


Away  with  that  famed  sentence  Know  thyself! 
'Tis  not  well  put;  Know  others,  to  my  thinking, 
Is  a  more  apt  and  profitable  maxim. 

— Menander. 


BOSTON 

SHERMAN,  FRENCH  &  COMPANY 

1912 


ETFHE 


Copyright,  1912 
Sherman,  French  c>  Company 


TO 

MY  BELOVED  WIFE 

I  DEDICATE  THESE  PAGES,  BECAUSE 

ALL  THAT  IS  GOOD  IN  THEM,  AND  MUCH  OF 

WHATEVER  IS  GOOD  IN  THEIR  AUTHOR 

COMES  OF  HER  TENDER  AND  PURE 

LOVE,  AND  IS  DUE  TO  HER 

DEAR  COMPANIONSHIP 


*U 


12629 


A    valiant    knight    whose    lance    doth 
pierce  the  follies  of  the  world. 

— Archceologia 


PREFATORY  NOTE 

\  WRITER  has  always  on  his  table,  or  con- 
■*■  *■  cealed  in  one  or  more  of  its  drawers,  liter- 
ary material  that  has  failed  of  finding  a  place 
in  any  of  his  books.  As  time  passes  the  mate- 
rial increases  in  quantity;  and  sometimes,  be- 
cause of  occasional  revisions,  it  improves  in 
character  and  becomes  more  worthy  of  preserva- 
tion. What  shall  he  do  with  it?  He  may  be 
moved  by  some  inward  impulse  to  cast  it  all  into 
the  fire.  Yet  not  a  few  of  those  pages  have  cost 
him  labor;  and  some  of  them  may  possess  a 
modicum  of  interest  for  the  general  reader. 
Why  should  not  the  author,  after  winnowing 
from  the  grain  so  much  of  the  chaff  as  it  may 
be  possible  thus  to  separate  from  the  ripe  grain, 
gather  what  remains  of  the  corn  into  some  such 
granary  as  a  book  like  this  provides?  The  au- 
thor has  expressed  his  opinions  with  freedom 
and  frankness,  and  he  believes  there  are  in  this 
world  many  candid  men  and  women  who  will  wel- 
come his  frankness  even  though  they  may,  m 
some  cases,  dissent  from  the  conclusions  arrived 
at.     Only  to  such  readers  is  this  book  addressed. 

F.  R.  M. 


CONTENTS 

PAGE 

The    Vulgar   Age 1 

Patrick    Henry 17 

Woman's  World 17 

Personality 39 

The    Shadow 40 

Freedom  in  Married  Life 40 

Popular    Suffrage 44 

An  Interesting  Exhibit  of  Injustice 44 

"Ye  Olde  Booke  Man" 51 

Cheap  and  Nasty 64 

Blake's  Vision  of  Angels 64 

Every  Man  his  own  Jailer 65 

Anthony  Tyrrell 66 

Development  of  the   Spiritual   Life 68 

Religious    Nature 69 

God   in    Nature 78 

Tuning  the  Pulpits 78 

Unfriendly    Religion 78 

The   Sharp  Edge   of   Mercy 79 

"He    Taught   Them" 79 

Theology  and  Physical  Condition 80 

The  National  Church  and  Parliament  ....  80 

A  Faith  that  cannot  be  Sung 82 

Ecclesiastical   Profanity 82 

Institutions 83 

The  Marriage  of  Cupid  and  Psyche 84 

Rivalry 85 

True   Beauty  Astonishes 86 


CONTENTS 

PAGE 

A   Buttonless   Philosopher 87 

The  Gentleman 87 

Manners 87 

A  Literary  Resemblance 88 

No    Long    Poem 89 

A  True   Standard 89 

Penance 90 

Style 90 

Seneca's   Pilot 91 

The  Sense  of  Sound  in  Literature 93 

Genius 92 

Discernment   of    Beauty 94 

The  Five  Best  Poems  in  the  English  Language     .  95 

A   Perfect   Temperament 96 

Civilization 96 

Cooperation 98 

Jefferson 99 

Our   National   Emblem 101 

Swedenborg  as  a  Poet 112 

A  College  of  Journalism 113 

Pharmacy 117 

Hymns  Better  than  Creeds 120 

Victor  Hugo 120 

The    Present 121 

The    Agnostic 121 

Modern    Poetry    Artificial 122 

Songless  Verse  is  not  Poetry 123 

We  are  Ruled  by  the  Dead 123 

Popular    Government 124 

The   Successful   Politician 124 

Evangelical   Books  Dull 125 

The  Sensuous  World  is  Symbolic 126 

Where  to  Look 126 


CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Gladstone 126 

The  United  States  too  Young  for  History     .      .      .  127 

Longfellow 128 

A  Brazen  Jackass 128 

Simpler    Relations 129 

Suppression    of    Knowledge 129 

Truth 129 

The   Mob 130 

John    Hancock 130 

Religious  Instruction  in  Public  Schools  ....   132 

Socialism 133 

Two    Republics 138 

British  Rule 141 

Most  Men  have  Ordinary  Abilities 142 

The   Approaching  Period 144 

Contempt  for   Manual   Labor 145 

Work  is  Honorable 147 

English   Rule   in   America 148 

Minor    Poets 150 

The    Crowd 153 

The   Bull  Moose   in   Greek 155 

The    New    Beelzebub 156 

Mosaics 157 

Lais  Dedicates  Her  Mirror  to  Venus 165 

Surroundings 168 

The  Reward  of  Virtue 169 

Physical  Contact  and  Social  Recognition     .      .      .   170 
Frances   Power  Cobbe 184 


THE  VULGAR  AGE 

TF  this  paper  required  a  motto,  surely  the  au- 
thor  could  prefix  to  what  he  has  here  to  say 
about  the  rudeness  and  want  of  refinement  which 
he  believes  to  be  peculiarly  marked  features  of 
the  present  age  no  words  more  pertinent  than 
are  those  which  Miss  Mary  Windsor  addressed 
to  a  woman's  suffrage  association  in  convention 
at  the  time  (October  20,  1911)  in  Louisville, 
Kentucky.  The  subject  under  discussion  was 
"The  Way  to  Interest  the  Uninterested." 

Miss  Windsor  was  not  in  any  wise  what  is 
called  mealy-mouthed,  nor  did  she  go  out  of  her 
way  to  find  delicate  phraseology.  This  is  what 
she  is  reported  to  have  said:  "Whatever  you 
do,  don't  be  tiresome.  Better  be  vulgar.  This 
is  a  vulgar  age.  Be  loud,  be  yellow,  be  any- 
thing to  be  picturesque."  She  followed  her  own 
advice,  and  her  harangue  was  highly  illustrative 
of  the  manner  of  speech  she  recommended  to  her 
sister  reformers. 

She  was  surely  right;  this  is,  indeed,  a  vul- 
gar age — an  age  of  vulgar  men  and  women. 
Whether    Miss    Windsor's    words    were    strictly 


%  A  FREE  LANCE 

speaking  "yellow,"  we  shall  not  undertake  to  de- 
termine ;  but  they  were  beyond  all  question  "pic- 
turesque," though  not  in  precisely  the  way  the 
few  lovers  of  fine  speech  who  still  exist  could 
wish.  The  only  criticism  we  shall  pass  upon 
Miss  Windsor's  harangue  is  that  the  advice 
which  it  contained  was  wholly  unnecessary. 
Most  of  the  suffrage  conventions  called  together 
by  women  are,  so  far  as  we  know  them,  suffi- 
ciently vulgar,  and  require  no  exhortation  to  in- 
creased vulgarity.  The  lady  brought  coals  to 
Newcastle  when  she  recommended  to  her  sisters 
the  chrome-colored  speech  of  which  her  own 
highly  pigmented  address  was  an  excellent  ex- 
ample. 

The  Age,  as  we  commonly  use  the  word,  is 
something  more  than  a  fixed  period.  Indeed, 
time  is  an  inconsiderable  element  in  what  we  call 
the  age.  The  age  includes  the  men  and  women 
living  at  the  epoch  under  consideration;  it  in- 
cludes also  the  speech  of  these,  and  their  deeds 
as  well.  Nothing  contributes  more  generously 
to  the  vulgarity  of  the  present  age  than  much 
of  the  language  commonly  employed  in  ordi- 
nary conversation  and  in  the  newspapers,  books, 
and  magazines  which  are  everywhere  published 
and   read.     The    vulgarization    of   literature   is 


THE  VULGAR  AGE  3 

one  of  the  most  striking  features  of  the  age  in 
which  we  live. 

We  have  what  is  commonly  called  "The  Yel- 
low Press."  Some  of  our  most  mendacious  pa- 
pers have  a  very  large  circulation.  Their  ed- 
itors stop  at  nothing.  Scandal,  slander,  shame, 
and  infamy  are  written  large  on  every  page. 
Sensational  lies  are  dressed  up  in  showy  head- 
lines. An  appeal  is  openly  made  to  the  worst 
passions.  Good  causes  and  worthy  enterprises 
are  scoffed  at  and  evil  things  are  encouraged. 
Of  course  the  press  described  is  something  much 
worse  than  vulgar,  but  it  is  the  vulgarity  that 
concerns  us  now.  The  Satanic  press  is  always 
vulgar.  Its  readers  are  vulgar,  and  their  tastes 
and  desires  are  like  themselves. 

But  there  are  other  papers  which  do  not  an- 
swer to  the  above  description  and  which  are, 
nevertheless,  in  every  sense  of  the  word  vulgar. 
Their  editors  would  be  shocked  at  the  thought 
of  encouraging  vice,  and  yet  they  are  employ- 
ing in  every  issue  the  phraseology  of  the  vicious 
and  criminal  classes.  They  familiarize  their 
readers  with  words  and  expressions  coined  and 
circulated  by  worthless  and  profligate  men,  by 
lawbreakers  and  disturbers  of  the  peace.  They 
make  frequent  use  of  the  word  "yellow,"  which 


4  A  FREE  LANCE 

is  a  slang  word  setting  forth  the  kind  of  paper 
which  they  themselves  publish.  The  papers  we 
are  describing  make  unrestricted  use  of  such 
words  as  "pal"  (an  accomplice  or  a  partner  in 
crime),  "swipe"  (to  grab  a  thing  when  its  owner 
is  not  watching),  "pull"  (a  political  claim  or 
requisition),  "bounce"  (to  discharge  an  employe 
unceremoniously  or  ungraciously),  "boodle" 
(money  fraudulently  obtained  in  the  public  serv- 
ice), "skip"  (to  run  away  in  the  night,  or  to 
elude  an  officer  of  the  law),  "cop"  (a  police- 
man), "jug"  (a  jail  or  a  workhouse),  "graft" 
(stolen  money),  and  "bag"  (to  arrest  or  cap- 
ture). These  and  other  specimens  of  criminal 
phraseology  are  made  free  use  of  by  such  pa- 
pers as  I  am  describing.  Let  none  of  my 
readers  think  I  am  portraying  the  Police  Ga- 
zette and  papers  of  that  kind.  I  am  setting  forth 
that  paper  and  hundreds  of  other  papers 
of  all  kinds.  I  am  describing  for  you,  my 
good  reader,  the  morning  paper  that  you 
find  on  your  breakfast  table,  and  the  evening 
paper  that  you  enjoy  after  the  labor  of  the 
day  is  over.  You  may  not  be  greatly  harmed 
by  such  periodicals  (though  that  is  by  no  means 
so  certain  as  you  may  think),  but  what  shall  be 
said  of  their  influence  over  the  tender  minds  of 


THE  VULGAR  AGE  5 

your  children?  You  would  not  yourself  in  the 
presence  of  your  children  make  use  of  the  lan- 
guage we  are  criticising.  Let  us  hope  you  would 
not  use  such  language  anywhere.  What  is  to 
be  thought  of  headlines  constructed  after  the  fol- 
lowing fashion? 

"The  District  Attorney  Consults  His  Pal;" 
"More  Boodle  for  the  Ninth  Ward;"  "Let  the 
Jurymen  Bag  the  Facts ;"  "Grafters  at  Work  in 
the  Windy  City;"  "Our  Alderman  Gets  a  Swat 
in  the  Snout;"  "He  Skipped  for  Parts  Un- 
known ;"  "Democrats  Get  the  Jump ;"  "The  Boss 
Kicks." 

All  this  may  have  a  decidedly  American  flavor, 
suggestive  of  "uncrowned  sovereigns,"  but  there 
is  absolutely  nothing  about  it  that  suggests  any- 
thing better  than  the  peculiar  flavor  named. 
This  is  an  age  that  finds  great  pleasure  in  out-of- 
door  sports  that  have  in  them  much  that  is  whole- 
some and  invigorating;  but  there  is  about  them 
almost  nothing  that  brings  out  the  dignity  and 
beauty  of  the  human  form.  In  ancient  Greece 
nature  was  undressed,  and  the  human  figure  in 
all  its  nude  beauty,  without  a  thought  of  immod- 
esty, impressed  itself  upon  the  imagination  in 
such  a  way  as  to  educate  the  sense  of  artistic 
beauty.     But   our   baseball  games   and   athletic 


6  A  FREE  LANCE 

sports  are  commonly  rude,  and  never  suggestive 
of  refinement.  Yet  to  the  reporting  of  games 
played  by  college  students  and  by  professional 
players  our  newspapers  devote  much  space.  But 
they  seldom  rebuke  the  gambling  and  the  rowdy- 
ism that  are  not  often  wanting ;  on  the  contrary, 
they  usually  resent  any  effort  made  by  the  better 
element  in  society  to  prevent  or  even  restrict 
these  unfortunate  features.  Many  papers  openly 
espouse  the  gambler's  side  in  any  controversy 
that  may  occur  between  what  are  called  "book- 
makers" at  the  race-track  and  good  men  and 
women  who  endeavor  to  enforce  the  law  against 
gambling.  Such  papers  are,  apart  from  their 
viciousness,  vulgar  to  the  very  last  degree. 
The  age  that  sustains  such  papers  and  thinks 
well  of  them  is  correctly  described  as  a  vulgar 
age. 

Think  of  the  vulgarity  of  an  ex-President  of 
the  United  States  who  could  travel  from  one 
end  of  the  country  to  the  other,  sounding  his 
trumpet  with  equal  vigor  and  energy  in  willing 
and  unwilling  ears ;  blowing  his  own  praise  in  the 
face  of  friend  and  foe.  Washington  did  nothing 
of  the  kind,  nor  did  Lincoln.  Think  of  a  man 
storming,  as  it  were,  heaven  and  earth  in  one 
wild   effort    to   make   himself   the   nominee   of   a 


THE  VULGAR  AGE  7 

reluctant  party.  Could  anything  be  more  rude 
and  repulsive  than  Mr.  Roosevelt's  self-ex- 
ploitation, full  to  the  brim  and  overflowing  with 
an  obnoxious  personality? 

Not  a  political  campaign  goes  by  without  my 
receiving  from  candidates  (strangers,  most  of 
them,  to  me)  photographs  of  themselves,  and 
sickening  praise  of  their  own  work.  Verily  this 
is  indeed  a  vulgar  age !  One  man  of  whom  I 
knew  absolutely  nothing — a  stranger — wrote  to 
tell  me  he  was  a  man  of  exceptionable  probity. 
What  his  letter  made  clear  enough  was  that  he 
was  a  man  of  exceptionable  impudence.  An- 
other seeker  after  political  preferment  sent  me 
a  picture  of  himself.  The  face  was  that  of  a 
bruiser.  I  might  ignorantly  have  voted  for 
him,  not  knowing  anything  about  either  him  or 
the  opposing  candidate,  had  I  not  accounted 
that  face  of  brass  a  sufficient  warning.  Alas ! 
these  are  the  kind  of  men  that  fill  too  many  of 
our  political  offices  and  other  places  of  trust. 

The  extreme  partisan  feeling  of  most  of  our 
secular  papers  with  regard  to  political  questions, 
methods,  and  affiliations,  is  in  every  way  vulgar. 
Nothing  can  be  more  wanting  in  good  sense,  fine 
feeling,  and  noble  purpose  than  an  unconditionally 
partisan  club  or  newspaper.     In  a  world  wherein 


8  A  FREE  LANCE 

nothing  is  lifted  above  imperfection,  and  wherein 
no  man  is  infallible,  it  becomes  all  of  us  to  be 
charitable  in  judgment,  ready  to  reverse  what- 
ever line  of  conduct  we  may  have  adopted,  and 
cautious  in  the  expression  of  opinion.  The  slang 
phrase  "cock-sure,"  which  means  overconfident, 
expresses  in  a  rude  way  the  intellectual  and  moral 
attitude  of  the  vulgar  partisan.  The  crass 
champion  or  reformer  will  denounce  whatever  man 
or  measure  happens  to  lie  in  his  way.  The  vul- 
garity of  the  exhibition  which  he  makes  is  a  thing 
of  which  he  never  even  dreams.  He  cannot  un- 
derstand how  anything  can  be  good  that  he  op- 
poses, or  that  opposes  him. 

As  a  matter  of  fact,  all  political  parties  are 
corrupt,  and  the  man  who  yields  any  of  them  an 
unconditional  loyalty  is,  in  all  probability,  him- 
self like  unto  them.  But  it  is  also  true  that  who- 
ever denounces  them  all  without  reserve  is  quite 
as  far  removed  from  good  sense  and  reason. 
Parties  are  essential  to  the  welfare  of  our  coun- 
try. Different  parties  act  as  secret  agents  to  spy 
out  faults  and  misdeeds,  each  holding  up  to  view 
the  party  that  opposes  its  plans  and  purposes. 
It  is,  of  course,  an  illustration  of  the  old  saying, 
"the  pot  calls  the  kettle  black;"  but  as  in  this 
case   both   pot    and   kettle    are   black,   there   is 


THE  VULGAR  AGE  9 

no  small  need  of  their  various  and  often  bitter 
assaults.  Undoubtedly  the  Republican  party  is 
quite  as  foul  as  the  Democratic  party  represents 
it  to  be,  and  the  Democratic  is  no  better. 

Of  course  this  mutual  exposure  is  vulgar. 
Gentlemen  do  not  give  each  other  opprobrious 
names ;  but  then  we  must  remember  that  they 
only  are  gentlemen  who  conduct  themselves  in  a 
decorous  and  seemly  way.  This  is  not  a  gentle- 
manly age;  on  the  contrary,  it  is  what  we  have 
called  it,  a  vulgar  age ;  and  in  nothing  is  it  more 
vulgar  than  in  its  political  diatribes  and  evil 
deeds.  The  language  used  by  otherwise  respect- 
able papers  and  public  men  in  dealing  with  polit- 
ical opponents,  the  slang,  the  vilification,  and  the 
false  charges,  all  go  to  prove  this  age,  in  what- 
ever concerns  personal  refinement,  a  rude  and 
coarse  age,  though  in  material  resources,  it  has, 
of  course,  the  advantage  which  comes  of  being  the 
inheritor  of  all  the  wealth  and  wisdom  of  the 
world. 

The  age  of  Nero  and  of  his  immediate  predeces- 
sors and  successors  was  one  of  unreportable  vice 
and  crime  and  of  the  greatest  extravagance,  but 
it  was  not  the  vulgar  and  spiritless  age  that  the 
world  has  seen  many  times,  and  will  no  doubt 
see     many     times     in     the     long     centuries     to 


10  A  FREE  LANCE 

come.  Nero  killed  his  mother,  a  thing  no  sover- 
eign of  the  present  day  could  do  and  retain 
his  throne.  He  gave  away  vast  sums  in  money 
and  treasure  taken  from  the  people  by  robbery. 
He  was,  in  all  probability,  a  madman,  and  his 
reign  was  a  nightmare.  But  he  was  not  vul- 
gar; he  was  a  man  of  many  natural  gifts  and 
of  fine  culture.  He  loved  beauty,  and  gave 
enormous  sums  for  its  expression  in  art. 
Under  the  Csesars  Rome  became  a  miracle  of 
beauty. 

Architecture  flourished  on  every  hand. 
Greece  also,  and  other  nations  as  well,  rejoiced 
in  the  splendor  of  marble  and  bronze.  It  was 
an  age  of  both  material  and  intellectual  refine- 
ment and  elegance.  But  now  contemplate  for 
one  moment  the  shapeless  structures  that  we  call 
public  buildings.  Take,  for  instance,  the  State 
House  or  Capitol  at  Albany  in  the  Empire  State, 
the  most  populous  and  wealthy  of  all  the  States 
in  our  Union.  Its  cost  was  very  great,  but 
as  a  specimen  of  good  architecture  could  there 
have  been  a  more  humiliating  failure?  It 
is  extravagantly  decorated  and  enriched  within, 
and  upon  its  walls  hang  many  interesting 
and  a  few  meritorious  pictures ;  but  who  would 
think     of    describing     it     as     an     architectural 


THE  VULGAR  AGE  U 

success?  Call  to  mind  the  so-called  statues  that 
disgrace  Central  Park  in  the  city  of  New  York. 
Consider  also  the  general  distaste  for  poetry 
which  in  this  age  makes  every  publisher  unwill- 
ing to  bring  out  a  book  of  verse.  It  matters  not 
how  good  the  book  may  be— no  one  will  purchase 
it,  and  only  here  and  there  may  be  found  a  per- 
son who  would  read  the  book  were  a  copy  of  it 
given  him.  Virgil  and  Horace  would  starve  in 
an  age  like  ours. 

I  am  neither  excusing  nor  am  I  condoning 
the  crimes  of  Nero.  I  am  only  comparing  his 
love  of  beauty  with  our  want  of  such  love. 
There  may,  perhaps,  have  been  some  cogent  rea- 
sons for  Nero's  murder  of  his  mother.  She  was 
a  woman  of  great  strength  of  mind,  and  she 
aspired  to  an  unlimited  authority.  She  was  also 
equal  to  any  crime,  and  beyond  all  doubt  her 
imperial  son  greatly  feared  her.  She  was  a 
much  stronger  woman  than  he  was  man,  and 
he  knew  it  only  too  well.  Had  he  not  taken  her 
life  it  may  be  that  she  would  have  taken  his. 
She  caused  her  rival,  Lollia  Paulina,  to  be  slain, 
and  commanded  the  executioner  to  bring  her  head 
to  her  that  she  might  assure  herself  that  it  was  in 
truth  her  rival  and  none  other  that  had  been 
dispatched.      She    pushed    back    with    her    own 


12  A  FREE  LANCE 

fingers  the  dead  lips  that  she  might  see  if  the 
teeth  were  those  of  Lollia.  Such  a  woman 
would  stop  at  no  deed  of  violence,  and  Nero  be- 
lieved his  own  life  to  be  in  danger  so  long  as 
she  breathed  the  breath  of  life.  Perhaps  after 
all  the  crime  of  Nero  was  not  so  desperate  as 
history  represents. 

Nero  loved  poetry,  art  and  music  as  few 
sovereigns  of  the  present  age  love  anything  that 
ministers  to  human  culture.  His  passions  were 
violent  but  his  tastes  were  fine.  He  may  have 
been  a  madman,  but  he  was  not  a  fool.  Agrip- 
pina  was  herself  as  extravagant  as  was  her  royal 
son.  She  was  an  artist  in  dress,  and  attired 
herself  in  robes  that  were  of  extraordinary 
beauty.  Every  robe  was  of  a  new  design.  We 
are  encased  in  inelastic  fashions  that  make  all 
women  look  alike,  but  she  made  her  own  fashions, 
and  into  them  she  put  taste  and  originality. 
Her  rival  Lollia  Paulina  was  also  an  artist  in 
dress.  It  is  recorded  of  her  that  she  wore  in 
public  a  robe  that  cost  what  would  be  in  our 
money  a  little  over  $1,664,580.  To  this  amount 
must  be  added  the  price  of  the  gems  that  she 
wore  with  the  robe.  Jewels  in  Rome  at  that 
time  did  not  depend  for  value  mainly  upon  the 
commonplace    cutting    of    established    patterns, 


THE  VULGAR  AGE  13 

but  upon  the  marvelous  beauty  of  original  de- 
signs. Each  stone  had  its  own  peculiar  beauty 
in  both  the  gem  itself  and  the  design. 

Rome  was  in  the  day  of  its  splendor  a  superb 
city.  From  Ostia-on-the-sea  to  the  imperial 
city  there  extended  for  fifteen  miles  a  street  of 
palaces,  villas,  tombs,  statues,  and  works  of  art 
of  every  kind.  In  the  city  itself  everything 
was  arranged  with  a  view  to  beauty  and  luxury* 
Palaces  of  green,  white,  and  tinted  marbles  rose 
on  every  side.  It  is  true  that  the  conveniences 
of  modern  life  were  wanting,  and  that  beneath 
all  this  splendor  there  was  a  vast  misery. 
There  were  no  hospitals  and  no  institutions  of 
mercy  and  charity  for  the  poor.  Slavery  was 
common,  and  the  rights  of  what  we  call  "the 
people"  were  not  generally  respected.  The  few 
and  not  the  many  created  all  this  beauty,  and 
to  them  it  belonged. 

To-day  things  are  changed.  This  is  the  age 
of  the  common  people — an  age  of  great  comfort 
and  of  measureless  vulgarity.  The  peasant  now 
enjoys  a  luxury  of  which  the  early  king  never 
dreamed.  The  common  people  have  come  to  the 
front,  and  they  are  taking  possession  of  the 
world.  If  only  they  were  trained  to  use  with 
wisdom    their   new   power,   we   might   hope    for 


U  A  FREE  LANCE 

good  results;  but  in  every  age  since  the  world 
began  wisdom,  good  judgment,  and  real  ability 
have  been  the  possession  of  the  trained  and 
educated  few.  In  the  very  nature  of  things  it 
must  always  be  so.  No  government  can  long 
endure  that  rests  upon  the  unenlightened  judg- 
ment of  the  untrained  masses. 

Writing  of  America  to  an  American  more 
than  fifty  years  ago,  Macaulay  said:  "Your 
republic  will  be  as  fearfully  plundered  and  laid 
waste  in  the  twentieth  century  as  the  Roman 
empire  was  in  the  fifth,  with  this  difference,  that 
the  Huns  and  Vandals  who  ravaged  the  Roman 
Empire  came  from  without,  and  that  your  Huns 
and  Vandals  will  have  been  engendered  within 
your  own  country  and  by  your  own  institu- 
tions." 

Macaulay's  prophecy  is  coming  true.  Popu- 
lar institutions  are  doomed.  A  country  gov- 
erned by  labor  unions,  uneducated  foreigners, 
and  irresponsible  bosses  must  in  the  very  nature 
of  things  perish.  The  majority  of  men  are  of 
lowly  birth  and  humble  circumstances;  they  are 
imperfectly  educated,  if  they  have  any  educa- 
tion at  all;  and  they  are  dependent  upon  daily 
labor  for  daily  bread.  They  have  neither  the 
time   nor   the   training   required   for   the   great 


THE  VULGAR  AGE  15 

and  difficult  work  of  governing  themselves  and 
their  fellow  men. 

The  fierce  commercial  competition  of  this  age 
is  intrinsically  vulgar.  It  reduces  thousands 
of  men  to  the  level  of  a  machine,  and  it  gives 
to  the  few,  as  their  principal  aim  in  life,  ma- 
terial supremacy,  while  it  gives  to  all,  as  their 
chief  good,  daily  bread.  It  ignores  all  ideal 
considerations.  It  is  a  return  to  what  has  been 
called  "natural  selection" — the  survival  of  the 
fittest.  It  is  the  conducting  of  human  affairs 
upon  the  same  principle  upon  which  the  beasts 
conduct  theirs.  There  is,  however,  this  differ- 
ence: the  struggle  of  tooth  and  claw  is  natural 
and  proper  to  the  brutes,  while  it  is  not  natural 
and  proper  to  man  in  a  civilized  condition. 
There  is  nothing  degrading  in  commerce  when 
pursued  as  a  means  and  not  as  an  end.  But  m 
this  age  it  has  become  an  end  for  which  men 
strive  with  a  fury  of  competition  at  once  cruel 
and  vulgar.  The  one  great  distinction  in  this 
age  between  man  and  man  is  the  possession  of 
wealth.  The  aristocracy  of  America  is  one  of 
dollars  and  cents,  and  not  one  of  brains  and 
morals.  A  wealthy  man  in  the  far  West  shot 
himself  because  he  had  lost  his  fortune,  though 
he  was   young  and  in  good  health,   and  might 


16  A  FREE  LANCE 

create  another  fortune  without  great  difficulty. 
He  said  that  he  could  not  live  without  money. 
To  have  it  known  that  he  was  poor  was  to  be 
disgraced.  Money  was  all  the  world  to  him 
because  in  this  age  it  includes  personal  stand- 
ing and  even  character.  He  saw  no  beauty 
where  there  was  no  money. 

■Compare  that  man  with  Gainsborough,  who 
found  delight  in  every  melodious  sound ;  who  was 
entranced  by  every  glorious  landscape;  who  re- 
joiced in  the  freshness  of  spring  and  in  the 
splendor  of  autumn. 

Poetry  and  the  fine  arts  have  much  to  do  with 
civilization.  The  age  that  neglects  these  is  ipso 
facto  a  vulgar  age.  But  it  is  the  common  com- 
plaint of  all  literary  men  that  poetry  is  not 
only  disregarded  but  positively  disliked  by  the 
age  in  which  we  live.  No  publisher  will  now 
risk  the  sale  of  a  book  of  verse,  and  with  good 
reason,  for  very  few  care  to  read  that  kind  of 
a  book.  To  be  an  eminent  poet  was  once  a  mark 
of  distinction;  but  now  the  writer  of  good  verse 
apologizes  for  his  genius.  The  last  generation 
saw  well-nigh  the  last  of  the  brilliant  New  Eng- 
land Transcendentalists  disappear  from  the 
face  of  the  earth.  Where  now  have  we  authors 
to  take  the  places  made  vacant  by  the  death  of 


PATRICK  HENRY  17 

Lowell,  Emerson,  Longfellow,  and  Whittier? 
Among  all  our  novelists  have  we  any  that  may 
be  compared  with  Cooper  and  Hawthorne? 
Where  are  the  peers  of  Parkman,  Prescott  and 
Motley?  It  is  safe  to  say  that  many  a  year  will 
go  by  before  again  we  have  a  genius  like  that 
of  Poe. 


PATRICK  HENRY 


p 


ATRICK  HENRY  may  have  been  the  "for- 
est-born Demosthenes"  that  Byron  called 
him  in  "The  Age  of  Bronze,"  but  a  man  trad- 
ing in  human  flesh  and  blood,  and  bequeathing 
slaves  and  cattle  alike  in  his  will,  is  hardly  the 
man  to  cry,  "Give  me  liberty  or  give  me  death !" 
He  denounced  Caesar,  Charles  the  First,  and 
George  the  Third,  in  one  breath,  but  was  he 
himself  less  of  a  tyrant  than  any  or  all  of  these? 


WOMAN'S  WORLD 

WOMEN  live  in  a  world  in  many  ways  very 
unlike  the  one  in  which  men  live.  The 
lives  of  most  men  are,  from  a  woman's  point  of 
view,  hard,  inelastic,  materialistic,  and  cold. 
The   man's   life   may   rest    upon   a   substantial 


18  A  FREE  LANCE 

foundation  of  fixed  realities ;  but  women  are  by- 
nature  poets:  they  idealize  whatever  they  touch, 
and  it  is  to  this  idealizing  tendency  that  they 
owe  the  romance  and  charm  of  the  wonder- 
world  wherein  they  dwell.  No  doubt,  in  this 
idealizing  which  underlies  the  feminine  life  there 
is  a  certain  unreality  that  would  lead  the  mas- 
culine mind  astray;  but  women  find  in  it  a  sub- 
stantialness  as  true  and  real  as  any  matter-of- 
fact  experience  known  to  man's  grosser  world 
of  "things  as  they  are."  Woman's  world  is  an 
illusion  only  in  the  sense  in  which  all  worlds  are 
illusions.  There  is  no  Ding  an  sich  for  any  of 
us.     We  live  in  worlds  of  our  own  creating. 

Yet  with  all  the  idealizing  characteristics  of 
the  feminine  mind,  women  have  never  excelled 
in  the  things  that  demand  constructive  or  crea- 
tive genius.  The  great  musical  composers,  like 
Beethoven,  Mozart,  Mendelssohn,  and  Wagner, 
are  all  men.  You  will  not  find  a  woman  among 
them.  The  supreme  painters,  such  as  Michael 
Angelo,  Raphael,  Murillo,  and  our  modern  Tur- 
ner, are  every  one  of  them  men.  There  is  in 
all  the  ages  no  record  of  a  woman  who  was  ac- 
counted a  great  sculptor.  You  will  not  find 
among  women  a  poet  of  the  first  order,  like  Ho- 
mer,   Virgil,    Dante,    Shakespeare,    or    Milton. 


WOMAN'S  WORLD  19 

The  feminine  mind  is  not  constructive  or  crea- 
tive. Women  are  well  able  to  appreciate  the 
arts,  but  never  will  they  be  found  among  the 
gifted  few  who  construct  the  charm  and  allure- 
ment of  a  great  original  work  of  whatever  kind. 
It  is  true  that  women  have  never  had  an  oppor- 
tunity of  understanding  and  enjoying  these 
things ;  at  least,  they  have  not  had  man's  op- 
portunity with  all  its  wealth  of  privilege.  They 
have,  however,  made  good  use  of  such  places  and 
occasions  as  have  come  to  them.  What  will  be 
the  final  issue  of  their  effort  to  win  for  them- 
selves a  larger  world  of  privilege,  it  would  be 
hard  to  say.  Most  of  the  opposition  they  must 
encounter  in  their  demand  for  suffrage  will 
come,  no  doubt,  from  certain  well-to-do  women 
who  have  themselves  no  need  for  the  ballot, 
and  from  Roman  Catholic  and  Episcopal  priests 
who  have  their  own  reason  for  interesting  them- 
selves in  the  matter.  They  will  in  all  proba- 
bility some  day  succeed  in  their  demand,  because 
the  world  is  moving  in  that  direction,  and  the 
spirit  of  the  age  more  than  any  effort  of  theirs 
will  determine  the  outcome.  But  of  how  much 
value  the  new  life  of  political  activity  will  prove, 
no  one  can  even  remotely  conjecture. 

The  masculine  temperament  is  essentially  ego- 


20  A  FREE  LANCE 

tistic.  Man  is  his  own  centre,  and  around  himself 
he  revolves.  The  woman's  temperament  is  ideal- 
istic. She  finds  the  centre  of  her  hopes  and, de- 
sires, not  in  herself,  but  in  a  nobler  world  of  her 
own  making.  Man  rises  above  society  and 
seizes  upon  the  world,  which  he  shapes  to  his 
own  purpose.  Woman  finds  her  happiness  in  a 
society  that  she  has  formed  for  herself  and  that 
reflects  her  own  mind.  For  her  to  rise  above 
society  would  be  for  her  to  rise  above  herself. 
The  social  circle  is  feminine,  and  its  verdict  is 
always  a  woman's  verdict. 

Much  has  been  said  against  the  double  stand- 
ard of  morality  which  punishes  a  woman  for  the 
sin  it  permits,  and  in  some  cases  even  applauds, 
in  the  man.  It  is  said  that  sin  is  sin,  irrespec- 
tive of  sex.  There  is  of  course  an  ethical  sense 
in  which  that  is  true,  but  for  all  practical  pur- 
poses there  will  be,  so  long  as  there  are  two 
sexes,  two  separate  standards.  The  judgment 
against  moral  delinquency  comes  through  so- 
ciety and  is  a  social  judgment.  Man  is  in  great 
measure  independent  of  social  exactions.  He  nei- 
ther made  them  nor  has  he  ever  fully  conformed  to 
them.  To  use  a  vulgar  phrase,  "He  snaps  his 
finger  in  their  face  and  goes  his  way."  That 
is  because  he  has  a  way  of  his  own  in  which  to 


WOMAN'S  WORLD  21 

go.  Woman  never  conformed  to  a  masculine 
social  standard ;  there  never  was  in  all  the  world 
and  the  ages  such  a  standard  to  conform  to, 
nor  could  there  be,  in  the  nature  of  the  case. 
No  more  could  man  be  required  to  conform  to 
an  essentially  feminine  standard.  There  will 
be  but  one  standard  to  which  both  willingly  con- 
form when  both  unite  in  constructing  it.  It 
will  be  androgynous,  combining  both  sexes ;  that 
is  to  say,  it  will  be  impartial  in  dealing  with 
the  problems  of  life.  When  we  have  that  stand- 
ard, we  shall  have  also  a  common  verdict  and 
mutual  obedience. 

Man's  standard  of  morality,  were  there  such 
a  thing  in  existence,  would  bear  less  heavily 
upon  woman  than  does  the  present  standard 
which  woman  has  herself  constructed.  The 
woman  who  falls  receives  from  the  circle  in 
which  she  moves  judgment  without  mercy.  This 
unlovely  severity  springs  in  large  measure  from 
self-righteousness.  The  consciousness  of  inter- 
nal rectitude  is  for  most  of  us  a  very  dangerous 
thing.  It  is  a  blast  of  moral  winter  that  seals 
up  every  fountain  of  compassion,  turning  the 
human  heart  into  ice.  Had  the  good  women  of 
to-day  been  living  when  our  Saviour  was  on 
earth,  and  had  they  been  present  when  He  said 


22  A  FREE  LANCE 

to  those  who  accused  the  woman  taken  in  adul- 
tery, "Let  whoever  is  without  sin  among  you 
cast  the  first  stone,"  they  would,  every  one  of 
them,  have  grabbed  as  many  stones  as  they 
could  lay  hold  of,  and  they  would  have  show- 
ered them  upon  the  offender's  head  with  all  the 
cruel  vindictiveness  of  a  self-righteous  spirit. 
The  inhumanity  of  the  social  verdict  and  of  its 
execution  stands  out  in  fearful  distinctness  over 
against  the  compassionate  words  of  Jesus, 
"Neither  do  I  condemn  thee;  go  and  sin  no 
more." 

A  very  intelligent  woman  told  the  writer  of 
this  that  the  ferocity  of  the  social  judgment 
sprang  from  the  most  abject  fear.  "The  woman 
who  goes  astray,"  she  said,  "endangers  the  home, 
which  is  woman's  special  province.  If  she  goes 
unpunished,  we  may  at  any  time  lose  a  husband, 
and  see  a  home  broken  up.  When  she  tempts  a 
man  she  wrongs  a  woman.  Self-defense  calls 
for  the  most  desperate  measures.  We  cannot 
take  her  life,  but  we  can  do  more — we  can  crush 
her  soul."  I  said,  by  way  of  reply:  "Most 
women  who  fall  are  tempted  by  men  before  they 
in  turn  become  tempters  of  men.  I  should  think 
that  of  the  two,  the  man  would  be  usually  the 
more  guilty.     Is  it,  then,  reasonable  to  ruin  the 


WOMAN'S  WORLD  23 

woman  while  the  man  goes  uninjured  and  even 
unrebuked?"  She  answered,  "We  could  not 
reach  the  man  if  we  would.  It  is  to  keep  him, 
and  not  to  lose  him,  that  we  wage  war  upon  the 
tempter.  His  sin  may  be  before  God  as  great 
as  is  that  of  the  woman,  but  its  effect  upon  the 
home  is  not  so  disastrous." 

It  all  comes  back  to  the  defense  of  the  home. 
This  ferocity  springs  from  a  fear,  and  very  nat- 
urally the  fear  is  combined  with  a  deep  feeling 
of  indignation  and,  in  many  cases,  of  revenge. 
The  wrong  is  great,  but  no  wrong  can  be  so 
great  as  to  justify  another  wrong.  Shake- 
speare never  wrote  truer  lines  than  these : 

"In  the  course  of  justice  none  of  us 
Should  see  salvation;  we  do  pray  for  mercy; 
And  that  same  prayer  doth  teach  us  all  to  render 
The  deeds  of  mercy." 

To  "crush  a  woman's  soul"  is,  so  it  seems  to 
the  writer,  to  do  a  thing  the  divine  Son  of  Mary 
would  brand  as  a  deed  of  darkness.  How  a 
woman  can  thus  deal  with  a  human  being  and 
yet  pray  to  be  herself  forgiven  as  she  forgives, 
is  an  unexplained  mystery,  unless  we  suppose 
hypocrisy. 


24  A  FREE  LANCE 

Women  are  naturally  Christians,  because 
Christianity  is  a  feminine  religion.  Love  and 
righteousness  seem  to  be  the  two  principal  sup- 
porters of  the  religion  of  our  Lord.  Love  is 
the  feminine  supporter  and  righteousness  the 
masculine.  It  can  easily  be  seen  that  love  comes 
first,  and  underlies  and  sustains  the  masculine 
righteousness.  It  is  the  fulfilling  of  the  law  be- 
cause it  holds  in  solution  all  the  virtues.  Love 
attaches  its  possessor  to  a  person,  and  everywhere 
we  find  that  it  is  the  leader  rather  than  the 
cause  which  he  represents  that  women  love  and 
follow. 

The  person  of  Christ  and  the  cult  of  Mary 
(in  the  Roman  Catholic  Church)  attract  the 
feminine  mind  and  heart  far  more  than  the  ec- 
clesiastical organization.  It  is  hard  to  find 
among  women — especially  of  the  better  sort — 
an  avowed  agnostic  or  an  unbeliever,  while  men 
of  unbelieving  mind  are  far  from  uncommon. 
Women  are  naturally  conservative,  affectionate, 
and  religious.  They  are  more  stable  than  men, 
and  have  greater  endurance.  They  hold  fast 
the  faith  in  which  they  were  born  and  educated 
long  after  men  have  learned  to  doubt,  or  have 
wholly  abandoned  their  early  belief. 

Women  are  by  nature  exceedingly  religious. 


WOMAN'S  WORLD  23 

But  strange  it  is  that  they  are  so,  especially  in 
Christian  Europe  and  America.  Everywhere  they 
make  much  of  religion,  but,  apart  from  the  wor- 
ship of  Mary,  the  religion  of  our  modern  world 
has  made  very  little  of  them.  Under  old  pagan 
faiths  women  had  many  and  serious  disabilities, 
yet  never  under  such  faiths  were  they  actually 
accursed.  No  sooner  was  the  Christian  religion 
planted  upon  our  earth  than  from  every  bending 
bough  of  a  rising  asceticism  hung  the  evil  fruit 
of  contempt  for  womanhood.  Of  course  this 
was,  though  under  the  name  of  Christianity, 
still  pagan;  for  among  the  Romans  a  woman 
was,  first  of  all,  the  property  of  her  father, 
and  later  she  was  that  of  her  husband ;  she  was 
man's  plaything  or  his  slave,  but  never  his  com- 
panion and  equal. 

It  was  asceticism  in  the  early  church,  rather 
than  the  church  itself,  that  blighted  woman's 
life.  It  was  a  great  wrong.  It  added  to  the 
pagan  contempt  the  monk's  dread  of  moral  con- 
tagion. Of  course  it  was  at  variance  with  the 
teachings  of  Jesus;  it  was  grafted  upon  those 
teachings,  and  in  time  it  came  to  be  regarded 
as  an  actual  part  of  them.  Thus  was  the  sim- 
ple Gospel  perverted  to  the  degradation  of 
womanhood.     The  Mother   of  our   Saviour  was 


26  A  FREE  LANCE 

exalted  to  a  celestial  throne,  and  so  removed 
far  above  all  the  daughters  of  Eve  who  were 
partakers  of  the  ancient  curse.  Tertullian  was 
a  Christian  father  who  did  much  to  shape  the 
early  thought  of  the  church ;  but  consider  for 
a  moment  the  opinion  of  women  which  that  great 
teacher  entertained,  and  which  he  expressed  in 
a  direct  address  to  them: — 

"Know  you  not,  each  of  you,  that  you  are 
sprung  from  Mother  Eve?  Against  you  God 
has  registered  his  righteous  sentence.  You  are 
the  gateway  to  forbidden  fruit.  You  are  the 
breaker  of  righteous  law.  You  persuaded  Adam 
that  the  Devil  could  not  harm  him,  and  so  with- 
out difficulty  you  destroyed  the  image  of  the 
Creator  in  man  whom  he  had  created.  What 
came  of  your  work  but  death?  It  was  because 
of  your  sin  that  the  Son  of  God  must  die." 

Thus  it  became  sin  for  the  priest  of  God  to 
mate  with  a  woman.  To  see  her  was  evil. 
There  were  monks  who  thought  that  even  the 
shadow  of  a  daughter  of  Eve  would  render 
them  unclean.  Celibacy  became  a  rule  of  the 
Church.  The  only  amendment  a  daughter  of 
Eve  could  make  was  religious  virginity,  which, 
it  was  believed,  introduced  her  into  the  family 
of  Mary,  the  everlasting  Virgin  Mother. 


WOMAN'S  WORLD  27 

I  wonder  much  that  women  are  so  religious. 
Their  religious  nature  must  go  very  deep  to 
stand  the  strain  of  such  dishonor  and  repres- 
sion. This  state  of  things  was  of  priestly  con- 
ceiving, and  not  of  Divine  appointment.  Our 
Saviour  honored  womanhood  and  exalted  the 
marriage  relation.  His  view  of  sexual  life  was 
in  all  its  essential  features  the  reverse  of  the 
ideal  set  up  by  ecclesiastical  authorities. 
Wedded  love,  and  not  virginity,  was  the  Divine 
model  of  perfection  in  the  relation  of  the  sexes. 

By  virtue  of  her  idealizing  tendency  woman 
creates  for  herself,  first  of  all,  a  world  of  mar- 
velous beauty,  and  then  for  man  as  well  she 
brings  into  existence  a  haven  of  peace  and  glad- 
ness. All  the  hard  experiences  in  life  she  or- 
naments and  adorns.  She  includes  man  in  the 
circle  of  her  idealization.  This  explains  the 
many  strange  marriages  that  take  place. 
Women  think  they  are  marrying  men  they  know 
and  understand,  when  in  reality  they  are  wed- 
ding the  creatures  of  their  imagination. 

Men  also  thus  deceive  themselves,  but  not  so 
often  as  do  women.  Narcissus,  fatigued  with 
hunting,  heated  and  thirsty,  stooped  down  to 
drink  from  a  clear  fountain.  The  classic  story 
records  that  he  saw  his  own  image  in  the  water 


28  A  FREE  LANCE 

and  took  it  for  a  beautiful  water-spirit  living 
in  the  fountain.  He  gazed  upon  the  lovely 
image  of  himself  thinking  it  another  being,  and 
so  fell  in  love  with  himself.  He  pined  away  and 
died,  the  victim  of  a  mistaken  self-love. 

More  often  the  water-spirit  falls  in  love  with 
Narcissus.  It  is  the  woman  who  does  the  ideal- 
izing. But  one  way  or  the  other,  the  idealizing 
takes  place,  and  few  marriages  are  made  with 
open  vision.  The  men  women  marry  and  the 
men  they  think  they  marry  are  not  often  the 
same.  Love  plays  fantastic  tricks,  and  women 
are  unconscious  artists.  No  doubt  in  time  the 
cruel  years  will  destroy  the  illusion.  The  vision 
will  fade  into  repulsive  reality.  Still  there  has 
been  for  a  season  a  gladness  it  is  more  than 
likely  the  reality  could  never  have  afforded. 
After  all,  no  world,  whether  of  joy  or  of  sorrow, 
has  for  us,  as  has  been  already  said,  any  other 
existence  than  that  which  we  ourselves  give  it. 
It  is  as  the  poet  tells  us: 

"All  is  but  as  it  seems, — 
The  round,  green  earth, 
With  river  and  glen; 
The  din  and  mirth 
Of  busy,  busy  men; 


WOMAN'S  WORLD  29 

The  world's  great  fever, 

Throbbing  forever; 

The  creed  of  the  sage, 

The  hope  of  the  age, 

All  things  we  cherish, 

All  things   that  live  and   all   that  perish, 

These  are  but  inner  dreams." 

We  discourse  of  reality,  of  a  final  criterion 
of  truth,  of  things  as  they  are,  and  of  much 
more  of  the  same  kind,  but  of  these  things,  if 
they  exist,  we  have  no  knowledge.  The  discus- 
sion of  the  fundamental  and  substantial  may  en- 
tertain philosophers,  but  for  all  practical  pur- 
poses such  discussion  can  have  neither  use  nor 
meaning.  Every  man  is  his  own  Adam,  and 
every  woman  is  her  own  Eve.  The  story  of  cre- 
ation starts  over  again  in  every  cradle  and  ends 
in  every  new-made  grave. 

An  American  writer  said  long  ago:  "If  we 
discover  the  connection  of  our  thoughts  and  feel- 
ings with  outward  nature,  the  whole  universe  is 
in  our  power;  and  we  may,  by  a  modification  of 
ourselves,  change  the  world  from  its  present 
state  into  what  we  all  wish  it  might  become." 
In  other  words,  to  quote  from  Goethe,  "Each 
one  sees  what  he  carries  in  his  heart." 


30  A  FREE  LANCE 

We  make  our  own  universe,  and  people  it  as 
we  will.  But  what  does  it  all  matter?  Comes 
it  not  to  the  same  thing  in  the  end,  whether  man 
is  dependent  upon  an  outward  universe,  or 
whether  that  universe  is  dependent  upon  the  in- 
dividual soul?  To  Emerson  the  two  proposi- 
tions are  the  same.  "Whether,"  wrote  the  Sage 
of  Concord,  "nature  enjoys  a  substantial  exist- 
ence without,  or  is  only  in  the  apocalypse  of  the 
mind,  it  is  alike  useful  and  alike  venerable  to 
me.  Be  it  what  it  may,  it  is  ideal  to  me  so 
long  as  I  cannot  try  the  accuracy  of  my  senses." 
There  the  matter  ends.  For  us  the  universe  is, 
view  it  as  we  miay,  ideal.  It  is  what  we  make  it. 
So  Coleridge  thought  when  he  wrote  the  famil- 
iar lines : — 

"Oh,  lady,  we  receive  but  what  we  give, 
And  in  our  life  alone  doth  nature  live." 

Women,  light  of  heart,  paint  in  the  gay  colors 
of  their  cheerful  and  hopeful  souls.  They  are 
born  optimists,  living  near  the  surface,  if  not 
actually  upon  it.  Men,  too  easily  depressed, 
create  for  themselves  a  universe  wherein  the  dog- 
star  reigns.  It  is  a  universe  in  drab.  The 
masculine  temperament  is  resolute  but  not  hope- 


WOMAN'S  WORLD  31 

ful.  Men  sink  their  analysis  to  the  inmost  core 
of  things.  They  themselves  dwell  deep  down 
below  the  surface  where  the  sunlight  does  not 
always  penetrate. 

It  is  generally  known  that  there  is  a  richer 
flow  of  arterial  blood  in  the  posterior  region  of 
a  woman's  brain,  while  in  the  case  of  man  the 
flow  is  richer  in  the  anterior  section.  The  func- 
tions of  the  posterior  are  mainly  sensory  and 
are  concerned  in  seeing  and  hearing,  while  the 
anterior  includes  the  speech  centres.  The 
higher  inhibitory  centres  are  concerned  with  the 
will,  and  there  is  an  association  of  centres  con- 
cerned with  the  appetites.  There  is  a  corre- 
spondence between  the  richer  blood-supply  of  the 
posterior  brain  and  woman's  delicate  powers  of 
sensuous  perception,  rapidity  of  thought,  and 
emotional  sensibility.  Correspondingly,  men 
have  greater  originality,  calmer  judgment,  and 
stronger  will. 

It  has  been  observed  that  women  are  nearer 
the  infantile  type,  while  men  approach  the  se- 
nile ;  hence  women  remain  normal  in  thought,  feel- 
ing, and  conduct,  while  men  have  a  variational 
tendency  toward  genius,  insanity,  and  idiocy. 
The  nearest  point  of  approach  to  genius  that 
women  reach  is  found,  so  it  seems  to  me,  in  novel- 


32  A  FREE  LANCE 

writing.  In  the  last  generation  they  were  ex- 
ceptionally good  letter-writers  and  conversa- 
tionalists. They  are  now  good,  but  not  great, 
actors.  But  there  were  some  very  great  actors, 
like  Rachel,  Siddons,  Ristori,  and  Charlotte 
Cushman,  among  them  in  previous  genera- 
tions. 

There  has  been  much  discussion  with  regard 
to  the  sex  of  the  angels.  The  Scriptures  and 
the  Church  seem  to  make  them  masculine. 
These  are  some  of  the  names  applied  to  them 
in  the  Sacred  Writings,  and  it  will  be  seen  that 
they  are  of  either  masculine  or  neuter  gender. 

1.  Gods  (Elohim,  "Worship  Him  all  ye 
gods"). 

2.  Sons  of  God  (Job  xxxiii:  7). 

3.  Seraphim   ("Burning  Ones"). 

4.  Cherubim  (Plural  of  Cherub:  "Fulness  of 
Knowledge." — Perhaps  from  the  Chaldee  for  a 
Young  Man). 

5.  Watcher   (Dan.  iv:  13). 

6.  Thrones  (Col.  i:  13). 

7.  Dominions   ("Lordships,"  Col.  i:  16). 

8.  Principalities  (Col.  i:  16). 

9.  Powers  (Col.  i:  16). 

10.  Morning  Stars  (Job  xxxviii:  7). 

11.  Living   Creatures    (Ezek.  i:  6-11). 


WOMAN'S  WORLD  33 

12.  Beasts  (The  Greek  is  better  rendered 
"Vital  Beings":  Rev.  iv:  6-8). 

13.  Gabriel  (Dan.  viii:  14). 

14.  Michael  ("Who  is  like  unto  God?"  Dan. 
x:  13;  Jude  9,  Rev.  xii:  7.  Michael  is  called 
the  Archangel). 

In  the  Apocrypha  we  have  Raphael  (Tobit 
iii:  17;  xii:  15),  and  Uriel  or  Jeremiel.  There 
are  also  evil  angels. 

These  names,  each  and  all  of  them,  suit  or  fit 
men  rather  than  women.  But  the  artists  could 
not  rest  satisfied  with  a  celestial  hierarchy  wholly 
male.  There  seemed  something  unnatural  in 
painting  upon  these  masculine  figures  iridescent 
wings,  aureoles,  and  much  more  of  the  kind. 
Fra  Angelico  di  Fiesole  depicted  angels  as 
women,  and  the  friar  never  suspected  that  he 
was  guilty  of  heresy.  For  centuries,  all  over 
the  Christian  world,  art  has  represented  the 
angels  as  female,  It  was  "Sancta"  rather  than 
"Sanctus."  Why  is  it  the  great  painters  have 
wished,  after  all  that  we  gather  from  Scripture 
and  the  Church,  to  make  their  angels  feminine? 
Most  of  the  world-renowned  artists  who  set  the 
artistic  fashion  for  us  all  are  men,  and  they 
very  naturally  think  of  bright  and  beautiful 
angels  who  come  and  go  on  errands  of  mercy 


34  A  FREE  LANCE 

as  celestial  women.  The  angels  are  painted  in 
flowing  robes.  How  else  could  they  be  por-j 
trajed?  Think  of  arraying  them  in  male  cos- 
tume !  How  would  an  angel  appear  in  a  frock 
coat  or  in  evening  dress?  Of  course  one  might 
arrange  an  antique  classic  style  of  dress,  but 
how  much  more  natural  to  use  such  drapery  as 
would  be  appropriate  upon  a  woman's  form! 
The  wings  suggest  aspiration,  the  desire  for 
higher  and  better  things.  The  German  poet 
tells  us 

"The  eternal  womanly 
Draws  us  upward  and  onward." 

It  is  the  mission  of  these  celestial  visitants  to 
draw  us  upward.  They  belong  not  so  much  to 
the  earth  as  to  the  heavens.  They  are  above 
us,  and  we  paint  them  in  the  upper  air.  They 
go  between  God  and  man,  and  connect  us  with 
heavenly  glor}T.  The  great  artists  have  always 
felt  that  when  they  were  painting  angelic  beings 
they  were  depicting  the  essentially  feminine. 
The  delicate  limbs,  the  gentle  and  refined  fea- 
tures, the  eye  bright  with  hope  and  love,  and  a 
feeling  of  purity — all  these  are  suggestive  of 
the   feminine   side    of  human   nature.     An   ath- 


WOMAN'S  WORLD  35 

letic  angel  would  seem  to  be  an  incongruity. 
The  creature  would  be  out  of  the  order  of  na- 
ture. Even  the  fighting  angels  who  combat  the 
Prince  of  Darkness  are  represented  as  vanquish- 
ing the  Adversary  not  so  much  through  phys- 
ical strength  as  by  spiritual  qualities.  These 
divine  combatants  are  made  to  be  masculine  out 
of  a  sense  of  propriety.  Otherwise  the  drawn 
sword  would  be  out  of  place.  There  is  no  real 
belligerency  about  them,  no  vindictiveness,  and 
no  anxiety  with  regard  to  the  result.  The 
fighting  angel  has  a  face  full  of  aspiration  and 
hope,  full  of  an  uplifting  peace. 

Someone  has  asked,  "Do  women  love  brutal 
men?"  I  believe  they  do.  There  is  a  force  in 
brutality  that  pleases  and  even  fascinates  some 
women.  Women  like  power.  Nothing  so  dis- 
gusts a  woman  as  an  effeminate  man,  and  noth- 
ing is  more  repulsive  to  a  normal  man  than  mas- 
culinity in  a  woman.  I  think  that  in  the  minds 
of  most  men  the  chief  objection  to  the  woman's 
rights  movement  grows  out  of  a  fear  that  the 
movement  will  defeminize  women.  The  fear  may 
be  groundless,  but  it  is  operative  nevertheless. 
My  own  belief  in  the  matter  is  that  the  en- 
franchisement of  women  will  have  a  beneficial  in- 
fluence upon  our  political  life  for  about  twenty- 


36  A  FREE  LANCE 

five  or  thirty  years ;  after  which  time  politics 
will  do  for  women  what  it  has  already  done  for 
men.  Women  will  bring  new  blood  to  our  po- 
litical system,  and  we  shall  have  for  a  while 
more  honesty  and  greater  faithfulness  in  the  dis- 
charge of  public  duties.  But  by  and  by  the  de- 
moralizing struggle  for  place  and  power  will 
corrupt  the  wife  as  it  has  already  corrupted  the 
husband.  Wait  until  we  have  a  female  boss,  a 
thing  as  unseemly  to  us  as  is  the  masculine  angel 
to  the  Fra  Angelico  school  of  painters,  and  then 
tell  me  what  you  think  of  the  political  equality 
of  the  sexes. 

But  still  I  believe  that  women  are  entitled  to 
the  same  political  rights  that  men  enjoy.  It 
will  do  them  little  good  morally,  and  much 
harm,  to  wade  in  political  filth,  but  men  claim 
the  right  to  wade  in  that  kind  of  material  and 
they  seem  to  enjoy  it.  Women  have  the  same 
inherent  right  to  choose  their  own  way  in  both 
public  and  private  life  that  men  have.  The 
boss  is  a  very  dirty  creature,  but  he  is  not  un- 
popular with  church  members  and  with  other 
good  people.  These  may  denounce  him,  but 
nevertheless  they  will  vote  for  him.  He  may  be 
himself  a  church  member.  It  would  not  be 
strange  were  he  an  elder  or  a  deacon.     Still,  the 


WOMAN'S  WORLD  3T 

boss  is  a  disgrace  to  any  political  system.  The 
filth  of  political  life  will  soil  women  as  it  has 
soiled  men,  but  so  long  as  we  have  political 
rights  and  popular  suffrage  some  one  must  lie 
in  the  gutter.  The  gutter  is  malodorous,  but 
hundreds  of  men  scramble  for  the  place,  and 
they  seem  to  be  afraid  that  women  will  get  it 
away  from  them. 

Women  are  fond  of  power,  and  when  they  be- 
come the  political  equals  of  men  they  will,  be- 
yond all  question,  grasp  at  it,  and  make  full  use 
of  it.  There  is  no  reason  to  think  they  will 
make  worse  use  of  it  than  have  men.  If  I  am 
right,  they  will  at  first  make  much  better  use  of 
it.  Women  have  had  comparatively  little  direct 
power;  all  their  power  has  been  indirect,  but  it 
has  been,  for  the  most  part,  well  used.  They 
have  had  charge  of  the  social  and  domestic  forces 
of  the  world,  and  they  have  made  them  tell  for 
good.  Without  woman's  presence  home  would 
be  impossible.  Church-work  and  many  benevo- 
lent enterprises  are  wholly  theirs. 

Women  are  more  chaste  than  men,  but  they 
have  fewer  temptations,  less  violent  passions, 
and  more  to  fear  from  the  consequences  of 
wrongdoing.  They  are  less  liable  to  be  intem- 
perate and  brutal,  but  they  have  more  vanity 


38  A  FREE  LANCE 

and  jealousy;  these  they  do  not  always  exhibit 
to  the  world,  because  they  have  tact  to  a  degree 
seldom  within  the  knowledge  and  practice  of 
men.  Women  are  more  merciful,  but  men  have 
a  better  sense  of  impartial  justice.  Women  are 
sympathetic  and  compassionate,  but  they  lack 
the  force  and  energy  of  their  brothers  and  hus- 
bands. 

Woman's  world,  beautiful  in  many  ways,  is 
always  intense,  but  never  is  it  wide  like  the  mas- 
culine world.  Women  see  the  things  that  concern 
themselves,  while  men,  with  larger  vision,  inter- 
est themselves  in  the  race  to  which  they  belong. 
I  much  doubt,  in  truth,  that  a  woman  could  be- 
come a  statesman  (I  suppose  the  word  should 
be  "stateswoman").  She  might  with  no  great 
difficulty  take  up  the  work  of  a  politician,  but 
the  mind  of  a  true  statesman  calls  for  a  much 
larger  outlook. 

Women  may  vote,  hold  office,  and  do  the  things 
men  do,  but  only  when  they  learn  to  live  as  men 
live  can  they  know  what  it  is  to  lead  a  free  life. 
So  long  as  they  are  upon  their  knees  before  the 
milliner  and  the  dressmaker;  so  long  as  they  are 
unable  to  travel  ten  miles  without  a  large  trunk 
well  packed;  so  long  as  they  must  ride  horse- 
back with  both  feet  on  the  same  side  of  the 
horse;   so   long   as   they   must   wear  their  hats, 


PERSONALITY  39 

which   they   describe   as   "creations,"   indoors — 
that  is  to  say,  in  the  theatre,  in  the  church,  and 
at  functions  of  various  kinds;  so  long  as  they 
must  dress  only  as  the  latest  fashion  requires — 
so  long  they  must  remain  the  slaves  they  have 
always    been.     Man's    freedom    is    not    a    thing 
apart   from   his   life;   the   two    are   inseparable. 
Far  back  in  the  early  colonial  days  in  this  coun- 
try the  cobbler  of  Agawam  wrote  of  women,  "It 
is   no   marvel   they   wear  drailes   on   the   hinder 
part  of  their  heads,  having  nothing,  as  it  seems, 
in  the  fore  part  but  a  few  squirrel's  brains  to 
help  them  frisk  from  one  fashion  to  another." 
The    only   possible   escape    from   the    "squirrel's 
brains"   is   now,   as    it   always   was   and   always 
will  be,  through  the  open  door  of  personal  inde- 
pendence.    Voting   may   help,   but    it   will   not 
change  the  narrow  life  of  woman  into  the  larger 
one  of  her  husband. 


PERSONALITY 


E 


MERSON  wrote  in  his  Journal:  "I  know 
not  why,  but  I  hate  to  be  asked  to  preach 
here  in  Concord."  He  preached  much  in  Con- 
cord and  in  towns  near  by  during  the  summer  of 
1856.  I  had  the  same  feeling,  and  I  have  it 
now.     After  I  gave  up  my  charge  in  Great  Bar- 


40  A  FREE  LANCE 

rlngton  I  did  not  like  to  preach  in  the  neighbor- 
hood. It  seemed  to  me  that  my  personality, 
with  which  the  people  were  familiar,  came  be- 
tween the  congregation  and  the  message.  The 
speaker,  to  speak  well,  must  lose  sight  of  him- 
self. But  how  can  one  lose  sight  of  a  person- 
ality of  which  one  knows  that  every  man,  woman 
and  child  in  the  room  is  intensely  conscious? 


THE  SHADOW 

WHEN  in  his  own  bosom  man  enthrones 
the  dream  and  neglects  the  reality; 
when  he  exalts  the  idea  and  forgets  the  prior 
and  superior  claim  of  the  deed,  thus  preferring 
the  shadow  to  the  substance;  when  he  has  made 
this  final  and  supreme  choice  of  the  unreal,  put- 
ting aside  life  itself  for  the  passing  emotions 
engendered  by  life,  then  has  his  doom  been  pro- 
nounced.    Then  is  his  service  forever  ended. 

FREEDOM  IX  MARRIED  LIFE 

NO  two  persons  can  live  together  without 
some  surrender  of  personal  freedom  upon 
both  sides.  In  married  life  the  surrender  is 
absolutely  essential;  and  where  love  is  present, 


FREEDOM  IN  MARRIED  LIFE       41 

and  is  wise  as  well  as  tender,  the  surrender  may 
cost  but  little,  and  brings  true  and  lasting  hap- 
piness. But  there  is  always  a  limit,  and  in  no 
two  persons  is  it  in  precisely  the  same  place. 
To  some  men,  as  to  some  women,  that  independ- 
ence of  thought,  feeling,  and  action  which  we 
call  personal  liberty  is  more  essential  than  it  is 
to  others.  But  somewhere  the  line  must  be 
drawn  beyond  which  lies  peril,  if  not  actual  dis- 
aster. The  secret  of  happiness  in  the  married 
life  consists  in  knowing  just  where  the  line 
should  be  drawn,  and  in  respecting  its  require- 
ments. 

Most  women  have  what  we  call  the  maternal 
instinct;  in  some  it  is  strong,  and  in  others 
weak,  but  few  are  wholly  without  it.  Where 
there  are  children,  the  instinct  finds  its  own 
natural  expression  in  all  those  tender  endear- 
ments and  noble  self-sacrifices  which  render 
motherhood  the  divinely  beautiful  thing  men 
have  always  believed  it  to  be.  But  often  (oftener 
now  than  in  earlier  days)  marriage  is  not 
fruitful,  and  the  maternal  instinct,  deprived  of 
its  natural  outlet,  usurps  in  some  measure  the 
place  sacred  to  conjugal  affection.  With  a  love 
not  wholly  wifely  but  in  part  maternal,  the 
woman    encroaches    upon    the    personal    freedom 


42  A  FREE  LANCE 

and  manly  independence  of  her  husband.  She 
has  in  one  both  husband  and  child.  If  it  so  hap- 
pens that  she  is  the  older  of  the  two,  this  en- 
croachment becomes  more  decided,  and,  it  may 
be,  more  harmful. 

Woman's  life  is  more  sheltered  than  that  of 
man.  Her  associations  are,  in  most  cases,  more 
religious.  She  has  a  life  in  church  activities 
which  no  man,  unless  he  be  a  clergyman,  can 
understand.  Her  emotional  nature  is  more  sen- 
sitive, and  plays  a  larger  part  in  her  otherwise 
more  circumscribed  and  intense  life.  She  has 
comparatively  little  of  man's  free  out-door  life, 
and,  as  a  natural  result,  she  knows  little  of  the 
self-reliance  that  comes  with  such  a  life.  Of 
man's  struggle  in  the  world  for  place  and  power 
she  has  often  not  even  the  faintest  conception. 
She  has  grown  up,  if  she  is  well  placed  socially, 
in  her  father's  home,  surrounded  by  comfort  and 
luxury.  She  knows  nothing  of  club-life,  for  the 
so-called  club  of  the  modern  woman  is  no  club 
at  all  in  the  man's  understanding  of  the  word. 
She  would  hardly  recognize  either  the  flavor  or 
the  scent  of  liquor.  She  never  in  all  her  life 
smoked  a  cigar.  She  is  unacquainted  with  the 
interests   and   exigencies    of   a   political   career. 


FREEDOM  IN  MARRIED  LIFE       43 

Her  life  is  in  most  of  its  salient  features  the 
opposite  of  man's  life.  Most  women  come  to 
the  marriage  altar  personally  pure — wholly  so 
in  body,  and  comparatively  so  in  mind.  Few 
young  unmarried  men  have  led  an  irreproacha- 
ble life.  Upon  the  altar  of  woman's  heart  the 
flame  of  married  love  burns  with  a  steady,  clear 
light,  but  often  with  less  ardor  than  could  be 
desired.  The  man's  love  may  sometimes  flicker; 
it  is  not  always  free  from  the  suggestion  of 
smoke  and  even  ashes,  but  it  is  a  living  fire. 

Now,  with  all  these  differences,  it  is  apparent 
that  some  degree  of  freedom  is  called  for  and  is 
essential.  The  woman  who  would  force  her  hus- 
band to  live  her  life,  and  not  his,  is  doing  a 
great  wrong.  She  may  become  a  domestic  ty- 
rant. Few  men  would  wish  their  wives  to  think, 
feel,  and  live  the  masculine  life — it  would  dis- 
tress them  to  believe  that  their  wives  could  so 
live.  If  there  is  one  thing,  as  has  been  else- 
where said,  that  a  man  dislikes  and  dreads  more 
than  anything  else,  it  is  a  masculine  woman.  It 
comes  then  to  this, — that  the  two  lives  united  in 
the  marriage  estate  are  never  one  to  the  extent 
of  self-extermination.  Self  may  pass  from 
sight, — it  should  so  pass, — but,  nevertheless,  it 


44  A  FREE  LANCE 

remains,  and  is  the  enduring  foundation  of  a 
united  life  and  love  that  finds  in  glad  surrender 
the  largest  freedom. 

POPULAR   SUFFRAGE 

T30PULAR  suffrage  means  an  enormous  num- 
■"■  ber  of  votes  cast  for  one  man.  The  av- 
erage man  disfranchises  himself,  and  the  "boss" 
elects  himself  and  his  political  friends  to  what- 
ever offices  he  and  they  covet.  In  the  end  a  re- 
public is  likely  to  become  only  the  irresponsible 
government  of  a  few  self-elected  men,  who  rule 
because  the  common  people  are  indifferent.  The 
common  people  being  what  they  are,  shrewd 
politicians  are  not  likely  to  encounter  much  dif- 
ficulty in  thinking  and  voting  for  them. 

AN  INTERESTING  EXHIBIT 
OF  INJUSTICE 

TN  the  United  States  of  America  the  personal 
character  and  standing  of  the  citizen  are 
of  so  little  value,  and  the  sense  of  justice  and 
"fair  play"  is  so  feebly  developed,  that  an  inno- 
cent man  who  has  been  mistakenly  convicted  of 
a  crime  he  did  not  commit,  is,  upon  the  discov- 
ery of  new  evidence  establishing  his  innocence, 


AN  INTERESTING  EXHIBIT        45 

simply  pardoned,  just  as  any  genuine  rascal 
might  be  pardoned  if  for  any  cause  it  seemed  to 
the  Governor  best  that  he  should  be  allowed  to 
go  free.  The  State  has  unjustly  deprived  a 
man  of  liberty,  has  associated  him  with  crim- 
inals, has  blackened  his  name,  has  injured  his 
social  and  business  standing  and  has  thus  im- 
paired his  ability  to  earn  an  honest  living;  and 
it  may  be  that  the  State  has  also  confiscated 
what  little  property  he  possessed  by  compelling 
him  to  use  it  in  his  own  defence: — all  this  the 
State  has  done,  and  yet,  upon  the  discovery  of 
new  and  exonerating  evidence,  it  makes  no  rep- 
aration. It  simply  opens  the  door,  and  says, 
"Begone!"  That  is  the  kind  of  justice  under- 
stood and  practiced  in  the  land  of  the  Stars 
and  Stripes. 

Two  thousand  years  ago  the  keeper  of  a 
prison  said  to  the  Apostle  Paul,  "The  magis- 
trates have  sent  to  let  you  go;  now  therefore 
depart  and  go  in  peace."  But  Paul  replied, 
"They  have  beaten  us  openly,  uncondemned, 
being  Romans,  and  have  cast  us  into  prison ;  and 
now  do  they  thrust  us  out  privily?  nay  verily, 
let  them  come  themselves  and  fetch  us  out." 
Paul  was  an  innocent  man,  and  he  refused  to  ac- 
cept a  pardon  that  left  him  guilty  in  the  eye 


46  A  FREE  LANCE 

of  the  law.  He  resented  that  kind  of  a  pardon, 
and  demanded  exoneration.  He  might  also,  had 
he  been  so  inclined,  have  insisted  upon  repara- 
tion. Paul  was  a  Roman,  and  he  demanded 
Roman  justice.  Had  he  been  an  American,  he 
would,  doubtless,  have  thrown  up  the  sponge. 
It  would  hardly  have  been  worth  his  time  and 
strength  to  insist  upon  anything  resembling 
justice. 

Quite  in  keeping  with  Paul's  indignant  re- 
fusal to  accept  the  place  of  a  guilty  man,  when 
he  was  not  only  an  innocent  but  an  injured  one, 
was  the  refusal  of  George  Fox,  the  founder  of 
the  Society  of  Friends,  commonly  called  Quak- 
ers, to  accept  pardon  for  crimes  of  which  he 
was  not  guilty.  When  great  effort  had  been 
made  to  secure  his  liberation  because  his  health 
had  become  seriously  impaired  by  reason  of  the 
hardships  attending  his  imprisonment,  the  judge 
ostentatiously  offered  him  a  pardon.  This  he 
spurned  in  words  that  remind  us  of  Paul,  but 
that  do  not  even  remotely  suggest  our  American 
citizenship.  These  are  his  words,  extracted 
from  his  Journal:  "A  pardon  was  not  agree- 
able with  the  innocence  of  my  cause.  I  had 
rather  have  lain  in  prison  all  my  days  than  come 
out  in  a  way  dishonorable  to  truth." 


AN  INTERESTING  EXHIBIT        47 

It  was  humiliating  beyond  expression  to  read, 
as  I  did  in  the  Medical  Record  in  this  year  of 
grace  1910,  that  a  reputable  physician  who  had 
been  sent  in  1905  to  the  penitentiary  in  Iowa  on 
a  twelve  years'  sentence,  for  a  murder  he  did 
not  commit,  was  pardoned  by  the  Governor 
without  apology  or  reparation  of  any  kind. 
For  five  years  the  State  had  taken  his  labor  in 
the  penitentiary,  and  rendered  him  no  compen- 
sation. During  all  that  time  he  had  been  the 
unwilling  companion  of  evil  men.  His  medical 
practice  and  professional  standing  had  been  de- 
stroyed. His  home  had  been  broken  up  and  his 
family  humiliated.  All  these  outrages  had  been 
heaped  upon  him,  and  then  at  last  it  was  discov- 
ered that  he  was  an  innocent  man.  Was  any 
effort  made  to  repair  the  damage,  or  to  save  the 
reputation  of  the  man  for  the  benefit  of  his 
family?  No,  the  man  was  not  evenly  publicly 
exonerated.  Had  he  been  hanged,  new  evidence 
would  have  been  of  no  service.  He  would  in 
that  case  have  gone  down  to  posterity  as  a  con- 
victed murderer,  and  the  State  that  hanged  him 
would  have  made  no  attempt  to  repair  the  wrong 
by  saving  his  reputation  for  the  benefit  of  his 
family. 

Andrew  Toth  served  nearly  twenty  years  in  a 


48  A  FREE  LANCE 

Western  penitentiary  for  a  murder  he  never 
committed.  When  the  man's  innocence  was  dis- 
covered, he  was  at  once  pardoned  by  the  Gov- 
ernor, and,  homeless  and  penniless,  he  was' 
pushed  out  into  the  hard  world  to  shift  for  hin> 
self.  Destitute,  enfeebled  by  age,  unused  to  lib- 
erty and  self-support,  with  most  of  his  friends 
no  longer  living,  he  found  himself  unable  to  meet 
the  demands  of  free  life  out  in  the  world  among 
men.  He  returned  to  the  penitentiary  and 
begged  to  be  readmitted  to  the  prison,  which  was 
the  only  home  of  which  he  had  any  knowledge. 

It  was  suggested  that  the  State  set  aside  for 
Andrew  Toth  the  sum  of  ten  thousand  dollars, 
as  a  compensation  for  the  ruin  of  his  life  through 
the  miscarriage  of  justice.  It  was,  however, 
shown  that  a  bill  calling  for  that  or  any  other 
amount  to  be  devoted  to  the  purpose  named 
would  be  unconstitutional.  The  State  can  send 
innocent  men  and  women  to  prison,  but  it  can- 
not spend  a  single  dollar  by  way  of  compensa- 
tion. Yet  when  one  considers  the  rapidity  with 
which  a  number  of  "public  servants,"  who  for 
one  reason  or  another  do  not  go  to  prison,  ac- 
quire wealth,  it  does  seem  that  the  State  they 
"serve"  might  make  some  reparation  for  a  great 
wrong. 


AN  INTERESTING  EXHIBIT        4?9 

Compare  in  this  matter  the  conduct  of  the 
United  States  of  America  with  that  of  New 
Zealand.  Mr.  John  Meikle  was,  in  1887,  ar- 
rested on  a  charge  of  sheep-stealing.  He  was 
convicted  in  the  Supreme  Court,  and  sentenced 
to  a  long  term  of  imprisonment.  After  he  had 
spent  five  years  in  prison,  it  was  discovered  that 
he  was  entirely  innocent  of  the  crime  charged 
against  him.  The  case  was  brought  before  the 
New  Zealand  Legislature,  and  Mr.  Meikle  was 
offered  a  pardon  and  a  grant  of  twenty-five 
thousand  dollars.  Mr.  Meikle  at  once  refused 
the  "free  pardon"  which  left  him  in  the  eye  of 
the  law  a  guilty  man;  he  maintained  that  if  he 
had  not  committed  a  crime  there  could  be  noth- 
ing to  "pardon."  He  insisted  upon  a  reversal 
of  the  judgment  of  the  Supreme  Court.  The 
result  was  that  an  act  was  passed  "to  reverse 
the  conviction  of  John  Meikle  on  the  charge  of 
sheep-stealing,  and  to  offer  him  the  sum  of 
twenty-five  thousand  dollars  as  compensation  for 
injuries  received."  Of  course  our  "wild  and 
woolly  Republic,"  in  which  Tom,  Dick,  and 
Harry  are,  all  of  them,  influential  citizens, 
might  learn  from  almost  any  nation  some  im- 
portant lessons  in  common  morals ;  but  it  is 
humiliating  to  see  New  Zealand,  with  its  civili- 


50  A  FREE  LANCE 

zation  of  yesterday,  so  far  in  advance  of  our 
own  land  in  the  simplest  elements  of  common 
justice. 

John  Henry  Chance  of  Boston  was  another 
victim  of  false  imprisonment,  who,  upon  the  es- 
tablishment of  his  innocence,  was  pardoned. 
He  had  served  a  long  time  in  prison,  and  his  life 
had  been  ruined,  and  yet  no  compensation  of  any 
kind  was  attempted.  One  of  the  worst  cases 
on  record  was  that  of  a  negro,  Jim  Henry,  who 
in  1909  was  convicted  in  a  Florida  court  of  as- 
sault with  intent  to  commit  murder.  After  his 
conviction  he  had  been  leased  by  the  State  to  the 
Florida  Pine  Company  and  to  another  company, 
and  for  both  corporate  masters  he  had  served  as 
a  common  slave,  with  the  added  stigma  of  a 
crime  he  did  not  commit.  A  small  monetary  re- 
muneration (about  four  hundred  dollars)  was 
made,  but  in  his  case,  as  in  all  the  others,  a  par- 
don was  granted  that  left  him  in  the  eye  of  the 
law  still  a  criminal. 

An  interesting  exhibit  of  injustice  was  fur- 
nished in  December,  1911,  to  the  people  of  the 
State  of  New  York,  and,  incidentally,  to  the  citi- 
zens of  the  entire  country,  in  the  discovery  of  an 
innocent  man  serving  a  life  sentence  in  Sing 
Sing  Prison.     Mr.  John  Boehman  had  been  in 


JOSEPH  McDONOUGII 


"YE  OLDE  BOOKE  MAN"  51 

the  prison  sixteen  years,  for  a  crime  committed 
by  some  other  person.  The  necessary  testimony 
was  supplied  by  two  men  who  had  remained 
silent  at  a  time  when  Boehman  needed  their  dep- 
ositions to  prove  an  alibi.  The  men  stated 
that  they  were  afraid  of  being  hounded  by  the 
police.  Had  they  died  at  any  time  during  the  six- 
teen years  of  Boehman's  imprisonment,  the  knowl- 
edge of  his  innocence  must  have  perished  with 
them.  In  that  case,  no  doubt,  an  innocent  man 
would  have  been  placed  beyond  all  hope  of  mercy. 
In  Boehman's  case,  as  in  the  other  cases  cited, 
the  mass  of  injustice  was  supplemented  by  fur- 
ther wrongdoing.  The  man  was  thrust  out  into 
the  world  with  no  exoneration.  He  was  par- 
doned for  a  crime  he  did  not  commit.  He  was 
offered  no  compensation.  The  State  did  not  even 
think  of  returning  to  the  misused  man  the  money 
he  had  earned  for  it  during  his  imprisonment; 
for  he  had  worked  for  the  State  during  all  those 
bitter  sixteen  years.  And  the  two  men  who 
withheld  their  testimony  in  the  hour  of  Boeh- 
man's need  went  unpunished. 


"YE  OLDE  BOOKE  MAN' 


M 


Y   good   friend,   Joseph  McDonough,   "Ye 
Olde  Booke  Man,"  is   a  hale  and  hearty 


52  A  FREE  LANCE 

Irishman,  honest  as  the  day  is  long,  and  as 
sharp  at  a  bargain  as  any  man  can  very  well 
be  in  a  world  like  this,  where  every  kind  of  busi- 
ness, trade,  enterprise,  and  even  profession,  is 
"war  to  the  bitter  end."  He  will  not  cheat  you, 
nor  will  he  prevaricate,  but  there  are  excellent 
reasons  for  believing  that  he  will  come  out  on 
top  when  you  "rush  in  where  angels  fear  to 
tread,"  and  put  your  book-knowledge  against  his. 
He  knows  more  about  books  than  you  do  unless 
you  are  an  exceptional  man,  and  he  has  the  same 
right  to  use  his  wits  that  you  have  to  use  yours. 
I  should  advise  you  to  spike  his  gun  in  advance 
by  asking  him  for  his  opinion  of  the  book  which 
you  want  and  which  he  would  be  glad  to  sell. 
If  the  little  book  on  the  table  before  you  is  not 
a  first  edition,  he  will  tell  you  that  it  is  not. 
Should  he  not  know  (a  most  unheard-of  thing) 
where  or  when  the  book  was  first  printed,  it  may 
be  he  would  roll  up  his  eyes  and  look  wise  "above 
what  is  written,"  but  you  may  be  very  sure  he 
would  say  frankly,  "I  don't  know." 

But  the  chance  of  his  not  knowing  is  poor,  for 
he  has  given  all  his  life  to  the  purchase  and  sale 
of  old  books,  and  he  knows  them  not  only  as 
things,  but  as  friends  to  be  loved  and  cherished. 
He  has,  hidden  away  on  one  of  the  back  shelves, 


"YE  OLDE  BOOKE  MAN"  53 

certain  books  that  tell  him  all  there  is  to  be 
known  about  editions,  prices,  and  pretty  much 
everything  else  that  a  bookseller  must  know. 
To  sell  one's  friends  does  not  seem  to  be  just 
the  right  thing,  but  that  is  precisely  what  every 
trader  in  books  must  do. 

Books  are  friends  and  companions,  and  some- 
times they  even  seem  to  be  living  creatures  that 
actually  put  their  arms  about  their  readers.  It 
is  really  a  very  tender  love,  more  gentle  and 
persuasive  than  one  finds  it  easy  to  resist.  By- 
ron fattened  a  goose  for  his  Christmas  dinner, 
feeding  it  every  day  from  his  own  hand.  The 
result  was  just  what  might  have  been  expected. 
When  the  Christmas  time  came  around  he  had 
become  so  attached  to  his  web-footed  friend  that 
he  could  not  bring  himself  to  consent  to  its  death. 
I  have  known  traders  in  old  books  to  refuse  to 
sell  certain  choice  volumes  that  they  had  cata- 
logued and  offered  to  the  public  at  remunerative 
prices.  There  is  a  Dutch  story  of  a  dealer  at 
The  Hague  who  assaulted  his  customer  when  he 
saw  him  removing  from  the  shop  a  book  that  he 
had  purchased  and  that  was,  therefore,  his  own. 
The  dealer  had  consented  to  the  sale,  but  he  had 
not  counted  upon  the  removal. 

Booksellers  are  generally  quiet  and  peaceable 


54  A  FREE  LANCE 

men,  though  Carey  fought  a  duel  with  Colonel 
Oswald  and  was  badly  wounded,  and  the  young 
Boston  bookseller  Henry  Knox  became  the  fierce 
and  belligerent  General  Knox  of  our  American 
Revolution.  The  Dutch  dealer  who  struck  one  of 
his  best  customers  was  more  irascible  than  war- 
like. He  conducted  a  large  business  at  The 
Hague,  and  was  respected  by  all  who  had  deal- 
ings with  him.  He  had  simply  repeated  By- 
ron's experience  with  the  goose,  becoming  so  at- 
tached to  a  favorite  volume  that  the  mere 
thought  of  taking  leave  of  it  stirred  up  every 
element  of  bitterness  in  his  nature.. 

I  said  that  Mr.  McDonough  was  an  Irish- 
man. He  was  born  in  Kilkenny,  and  if  that 
does  not  make  him  Irish  from  top  to  toe  I 
should  like  to  know  just  what  on  all  the  surface 
of  this  beautiful  earth  will  make  a  man  a  true 
son  of  the  Emerald  Isle. 

Two  very  distinguished  cats  were  also  born 
in  Kilkenny,  but,  quite  unlike  "Ye  Olde  Booke 
Man,"  they  were  of  an  exceedingly  belligerent 
disposition.  The  story  is  that  they  fought  so 
ferociously  that  each  swallowed  the  other,  leav- 
ing only  the  tails  behind.  I  have  known  the 
good  book  man  a  number  of  happy  years,  and 
never  yet  have  I  seen  any  marked  resemblance 


"YE  OLDE  BOOKE  MAN"  55 

between  him  and  the  aforesaid  felines.  It  is 
true  that  all  three,  the  "Olde  Booke  Man"  and 
the  two  lively  cats,  came  from  the  same  town, 
and  it  is  also  true  that  they  are  all  Irish,  but 
beyond  these  interesting  circumstances  I  know 
of  nothing  whatever  that  connects  in  any  way 
their   several  biographies. 

Mr.  McDonough's  father  was  Irish  before 
him,  and  so  it  is  with  him  a  matter  not  simply 
of  the  soil,  but  of  blood  and  bone  and  of  the 
soul  itself.  He  has  the  kindly  nature  and  keen 
wit  for  which  the  Irish  are  so  justly  celebrated. 
I  never  knew  a  more  friendly,  warm-hearted, 
and  jovial  man,  but  in  one  thing  he  is  not,  I 
think,  like  the  ordinary  Irishman,  for  I  have  ob- 
served in  him  a  faint  but  distinct  tendency  in 
the  direction  of  mental  depression.  Like  all  the 
rest  of  us,  he  has  seen  trouble,  and  it  may  be 
that  advancing  age  and  trouble  are  responsible 
for  the  depression.  Never  was  there  a  better 
companion.  I  have  passed  some  very  happy 
hours  in  "Ye  Olde  Booke  Man's"  shop,  in  an 
easy  chair,  with  a  fragrant  "Romeo  and  Juliet," 
and  no  end  of  rare  old  books  that  one  might 
look  for  elsewhere  many  a  year  and  not  find. 
Such  a  place,  full  of  strange  bargains,  and 
choice  and  curious  books  from  all  parts  of  the 


56  A  FREE  LANCE 

world,  must  be  a  joy  to  the  heart  of  the  lover 
of  books,  whoever  and  whatever  he  may  be. 
With  books  on  every  side  (cobwebs,  dust  and  all 
the  other  concomitants  of  good  reading  being 
present  to  season  the  intellectual  feast)  in  the 
old  book-shop,  Father  Time  lays  aside  his  pic- 
turesque scythe  and  tucks  away  his  hour-glass 
in  the  ample  robes  that  enfold  his  somewhat 
emaciated  anatomy.  After  a  while  he  slips 
away,  and  there  is  in  the  old  shop  no  more  re- 
membrance of  the  hours.  You  read,  read,  and 
read,  and  almost  before  you  know  it,  you  dis- 
cover that  the  cashier  is  making  change  for  you, 
and  you  awaken  to  the  fact  that  you  have  made 
a  purchase. 

Everything  happens  so  quietly  and  gently  in 
the  old  book-shop  that  you  wonder  if  there  is 
not  something  in  the  mere  presence  of  books 
that  men  have  overlooked.  You  somehow  feel 
that  what  little  is  said  between  leaf  and  leaf  is 
sacred.  The  Romans  hung  in  the  banqueting 
room  directly  over  the  table  a  beautiful  rose 
to  remind  the  guests  that  the  conversation  at 
the  table  must  not  be  repeated  on  the  morrow 
or  at  any  other  time,  but  must  be  sacredly  pre- 
served as  an  inviolable  secret.  To  every  guest 
"sub     rosa"    meant     concealment     and     silence. 


"YE  OLDE  BOOKE  MAN"  57 

White  was  the  color  of  the  rose,  because  it  was 
a  white  rose  that  Cupid  dedicated  to  Harpocra- 
tes,  the  god  of  silence. 

In  the  dear  old  book-shop  you  will  see  over 
the  long  rows  of  tempting  volumes  no  white 
flower  suggesting  silence,  but  you  will  see  what 
is  just  as  good  as,  and  to  the  book-lover  much 
better  than,  the  rose  of  silence :  you  will  see  the  no 
less  sacred  and  dust-white  cobweb.  In  capa- 
cious wine-vaults  the  cobwebs  gather  over  the 
musty  corks  of  old  and  well-seasoned  bottles, 
and  the  critical  judge  will  pick  out  no  new  vint- 
age, but,  stretching  his  arm  and  thrusting  his 
hand  into  some  dark  corner,  he  will  bring  to 
view  a  mass  of  dust  and  cobwebs.  He  knows 
what  he  wants,  and  he  wants  the  very  best.  In 
that  mass  of  dust  he  holds  the  finest  wine  in 
the  cellar. 

In  McDonough's  shop  you  will  do  well  to 
brush  aside  the  dust,  for  under  it  all  one  may 
sometimes  find  the  richest  wine  of  letters.  Take 
the  sliding  steps  (you  find  such  in  every  large 
book-shop)  and  mount  to  the  top  shelf.  The 
best  books  are  not  supposed  to  be  there,  but 
one  can  never  know  just  what  he  will  find;  no 
doubt  you  may  come  upon  some  vin  ordinaire  or 
some  new  vintage,  but  you  may  find  as  well  the 


58  A  FREE  LANCE 

very  life-blood  of  the  mellowest  grape  in  all  the 
vast  vineyard  of  letters. 

The  mellow  grape  of  golden  song, 
How  rich  the  life-blood  in  its  veins; 

Happy  his  hours,  his  life  how  long, 
Who  the  glad  wine  of  letters  drains. 

In  a  certain  sense  all  men  die  equally  well  off 
in  this  world's  goods,  for  all  leave  behind  them 
whatever  the  world  contains.  King  and  pauper 
leave,  both  of  them,  all  there  is  to  be  left.  It 
is  true  that  the  one  can  bequeath  to  his  immedi- 
ate family  what  the  other  has  no  power  to  dis- 
pose of,  but  they  both  leave  to  the  world  at 
large  all  they  ever  received  from  it  and  vastly 
more.  In  a  very  important  sense  I  own  all 
there  is  to  be  owned.  The  great  libraries  in 
every  land  belong  to  me  in  so  far  as  I  am  able  to 
use  them.  It  is  so  also  with  the  great  book- 
shops, and  with  all  the  rare  and  valuable  books 
that  crowd  their  shelves.  It  may  be  "Ye  Olde 
Booke  Man"  does  not  know  it,  but  I  own  his 
shop  and  whatever  it  contains. 

And  yet  I  must  respect  his  prior  ownership, 
which  is  not  less  real  though  very  different.  Use 
confers  ownership  of  its  kind.     Because  I  take 


"YE  OLDE  BOOKE  MAN"  59 

delight  in  the  arts  and  letters,  they  are  mine. 
Yes,  they  are  mine  forever;  that  is  to  say,  so 
long  as  I  live  and  retain  my  reason.  I  wonder 
men  who  give  themselves  up  to  books  do  not 
oftener  lose  reason.  The  charm  and  fascination 
of  books  and  of  book-collecting  are  very  great. 

I  have  a  beautiful  copy  of  Charles  Nodier's 
"Bibliomaniac,"  translated  into  lovely  English 
by  Mrs.  Mabel  Osgood  Wright,  and  published 
by  her  husband  in  1894.  It  has  forty-five  illus- 
trations from  designs  by  Maurice  Leloir,  en- 
graved on  wood  by  Noel.  It  is  the  story  of  a 
man  who  went  mad  over  books.  He  was  a  most 
amiable  lunatic,  and  everybody  loved  him,  save 
some  drunken  thugs  who  knocked  him  down  in 
the  street  because  they  saw  at  a  glance  that  he 
was  a  much  better  man  than  they,  any  of  them, 
could  ever  hope  to  become,  and  because  he  did 
not  join  them  in  a  rude  and  vulgar  shout  for 
Poland.  From  the  assault  he  was  in  bed  three 
months,  and  during  all  that  time  he  had  the  cov- 
erlet over  him  strewn  with  book-catalogues. 

What  delightful  reading  good  catalogues  are ! 
I  find  them  much  more  attractive  and  in  some 
ways  more  instructive  than  the  thousands  of 
wishy-washy  newspapers  that  concern  them- 
selves  and  disgust  their  readers  with  worthless 


60  A  FREE  LANCE 

political  jabber.  Give  me  good  books.  The 
longer  I  live  the  more  I  love  them.  They  bring 
to  the  soul  a  life  of  gladness.  They  breathe 
peace  and  contentment  into  the  troubled  heart 
of  man.  No  one  who  has  a  good  book  is  wholly 
friendless.  We  speak  of  sacred  literature,  but 
all  worthy  literature  is  sacred,  for  it  ministers 
to  the  things  that  are  divine  in  our  poor  hu- 
man nature. 

When  I  am  dead,  good  friend  of  mine, 
In  each  of  my  cold  hands  let  be 

Nor  rose  nor  leaf,  but  some  dear  book 
Of  sweet  and  priceless  poesy. 

I  obtained  from  McDonough  the  best  copy  of 
Bohme's  works  in  English  that  I  have  ever  seen. 
It  cost  me  only  forty  dollars.  The  next  week 
after  its  purchase  I  came  upon  a  London 
bookseller's  catalogue  in  which  the  four  vol- 
umes were  quoted  at  sevent}T-five  dollars,  and, 
from  the  description  of  the  book,  I  am  sure  that 
it  was  not  so  good  a  copy.  McDonough  offered 
me  more  for  the  work,  which  contains  Law's 
plates,  than  I  gave  him,  but  I  knew  enough  to 
retain  my  prize. 

One  sometimes  hears  of  readers  and  of  men 


"YE  OLDE  BOOKE  MAN"  61 

who  not  only  read  but  also  purchase,  who,  when 
surrounded  by  the  dust  and  genius  of  an  old 
book-shop,  experience  an  almost  irresistible  im- 
pulse to  pencil  the  margins  of  suggestive  books. 
A  certain  reader  confessed  to  me  that  he  had 
disfigured  several  volumes  in  a  book-shop  and 
one  in  a  public  library.  But,  as  he  was  a  man 
of  considerable  celebrity,  the  books  cannot  have 
been  greatly  damaged.  Had  the  scribbler  been 
plain  Mr.  Jones,  the  keeper  of  the  flour-mill 
just  over  the  way,  or  Mr.  Smith,  the  undertaker, 
I  should  have  thought  him  under  some  obliga- 
tion (moral,  if  of  no  other  kind)  to  buy  the 
books  he  had  certainly  not  improved. 

What's  in  a  name?  Much,  my  dear  reader, 
very,  very  much.  The  man  who  can  write  Wil- 
liam Taft  on  the  hotel  register  will  not  fare 
precisely  as  the  man  who  scribbles  Peter  Smith 
or  Timothy  Brown  must  fare.  Austin's  poetry 
is  poor  enough  (though  Pye  made  worse  verses), 
as  all  the  English-speaking  world  knows  only 
too  well.  A  malicious  writer  described  him  as 
"a  formalist,  a  man  of  clothes  and  externals, 
rubrics  and  rituals,  and  baboon  genuflections 
and  night-gown  posings ;"  but  it  must  not  be 
forgotten  that  Mr.  Austin  can  write  "poet  lau- 
reate" over  all  the  mass  of  worthless  trash  he 


62  A  FREE  LANCE 

has  given  the  world.  What  are  those  two  little 
words  "poet  laureate"  worth  to  the  man  who 
can  write  them  after  his  name?  Ah,  my  good 
reader,  they  are  worth  many  golden  pounds  that 
better  poets  find  themselves  unable  to  command. 

I  do  confess  that  I  once  yielded,  in  "Ye  Olde 
Booke  Man's"  shop,  to  an  urgent  desire  to  set 
a  certain  author  right  upon  one  of  his  own  mar- 
gins. Conscience-stricken,  I  returned  to  the  old 
shop  fully  determined  to  retouch  the  page,  or, 
failing  in  that,  to  make  myself  owner  of  the 
book.  I  did  not  get  the  book,  for  it  was  sold 
to  some  careless  reader  who  never  stopped  to  ex- 
amine his  purchase.  No  one  would  now  remove 
from  the  walls  of  an  old  prison  in  France  cer- 
tain inscriptions  cut  into  them  with  a  knife  or 
traced  upon  them  with  a  pencil.  Not  all  who 
left  upon  those  walls  their  bid  for  remembrance 
were  men  of  distinction,  but  time  and  circum- 
stances have  rendered  the  lines  they  left  well 
worth  the  preserving.  Time  and  place  can  do 
many  things  that  men  alone  find  themselves  un- 
able to  accomplish. 

I  once  purchased  from  McDonough  a  book  I 
did  not  want.  I  bought  it  because  I  had  writ- 
ten within  it  what  I  thought  might  not  please 
him,   though  what  I  had  written  I  might  have 


"YE  OLDE  BOOKE  MAN"  63 

penciled  in  a  book  that  belonged  to  me.  It  may 
be  the  verses  scribbled  that  fine  winter  afternoon, 
with  the  fragrant  smoke  of  a  good  cigar  enfold- 
ing me  the  while,  would  not  be  wholly  out  of 
place  here,  but  I  shall,  on  second  thought,  put 
them  aside,  substituting  this  rhyme  of  the  old 
book-shop : 

"ye  olde  booke  man" 

A  trader  in  the  brains  of  men 

Is  "Ye  Olde  Booke  Man"  sure; 
What  songs  and  stories  line  his  shelves, — 

Some  great  and  some  obscure. 

The  poets  come  to  him  for  sale, 

And  plain  prose-writers,  too; 
In  dainty  volumes  of  levant, 

Or  bound  in  gold  and  blue. 

I  wish  I  was  an  ancient  book, 

On  Joe  McDonough's  shelf; 
I'd  like  to  see  what  he  would  ask 

For  my  plain-featured  self. 

I'll  bet  he'd  sell  me  for  a  song, 

Or  for  a  single  note, 
If  that  fine  note  called  for  ten  pounds, 

With  pay-day  not  remote. 


64  A  FREE  LANCE 

Ten  pounds !  ten  pounds !  Great  Scott,  how  much ! 

(I  should  Great  Joseph!  say) 
Perhaps  he'd  tear  my  book-plate  out, 

And  throw  the  rest  away. 

We  authors  are  but  books,  I  trow, 

Some  good  and  others  poor; 
Our  leaves  and  bindings  fall  apart, 

Not  one  shall  long  endure. 

We  live  awhile  in  other  minds, 

Or  in  McDonough's  shop; 
Then   Time  brings  down  his  glitt'ring  scythe, 

And  from  the  shelves  we  drop. 

CHEAP  AND  NASTY 

/^HEAP  and  nasty"  is  a  phrase  that  de- 
^^  scribes  people  who,  ashamed  of  their 
humble  birth,  lie  about  their  ancestors;  who, 
ashamed  of  work,  are  still  not  ashamed  to  live 
upon  the  industry  of  others ;  and  who,  anxious 
about  the  curls  that  sprout  from  their  skulls, 
care  nothing  that  their  skulls  are  empty  of  any- 
thing worth  caring  about. 

BLAKE'S  VISION  OF  ANGELS 

"D  LAKE'S  first  vision  is  said  to  have  been  when 
*~*  he  was  eight  or  ten  years  old;  it  was  the 
vision  of  a  tree  filled  with  angels.     Mrs.  Blake, 


EVERY  MAN  HIS  OWN  JAILER     65 

however,  used  to  say :  'You  know,  dear,  the  first 
time  you  saw  God  was  when  you  were  four  years 
old,  and  He  put  His  head  to  the  window  and 
set  you  screaming !'  " — Gilchrist's  Life  of  Blake. 

Blake  was  an  engraver  and  poet,  and  a  tree 
full  of  angels  would  be  to  him  what  a  tree  full 
of  apples  would  be  to  my  friend,  the  good  farmer 
who  lives  across  the  road.  He  saw  along 
the  line  of  his  own  tastes  and  inclinations,  and  he 
took  his  most  congenial  conceit  for  a  manifes- 
tation of  Divine  Power.  In  this  he  was  not  un- 
like the  theological  and  ecclesiastical  romancers 
of  our  day,  who  are  so  familiar  with  God  that 
they  are  no  longer  filled  with  wonder  or  surprise 
when  they  contemplate  His  glory.  These  pass 
with  the  multitude  for  wise  and  saintly  souls, 
and  to  their  preaching  gather  expectant  congre- 
gations that  meekly  receive  chaff  for  grain, 
and  that,  being  invited,  strive  to  drink  the  wine 
of  life  from  an  empty  cup. 

EVERY  MAN  HIS  OWN  JAILER 

T7VERY  man  is  his  own  jailer.  He  goes  to 
"*~*  prison  to  himself.  He  is  under  lock  and 
key,  and  cannot   get  beyond  the  limitations  of 


66  A  FREE  LANCE 

his  own  nature.  We  discourse  in  glowing  terms 
of  a  liberty  we  do  not  possess,  and  the  while  we 
boast  of  freedom  we  are  chained  fast  to  our 
conceits  and  prejudices. 


ANTHONY  TYRRELL 

JANUARY  15,  1895.— Day  dark  and  rainy, 
**  but  study-fire  brighter  than  usual,  and  full 
of  gay  salamanders.  The  evening  hours  es- 
pecially delightful  in  company  with  a  new  ac- 
quaintance in  smooth  olive  morocco:  "The  Re- 
cantations as  they  were  severallie  pronounced 
by  William  Tedder  and  Anthony  Tyrrell, 
(sometime  two  Seminarie  Priests  of  the  English 
Colledge  in  Rome)  ...  at  Paules  Crosse; 
with  an  Epistle  dedicatorie  unto  her  Maiestie, 
and  their  severall  Prefaces  unto  the  Reader, 
contayning  the  causes  that  mooved  them  to  the 
same:  1588."  I  have  seen  one  other  copy  of 
the  book  in  the  British  Museum,  but  mine  is 
larger,  and  I  think  the  impression  is  more  dis- 
tinct. It  cost  me  twenty  dollars — too  much 
by  five  dollars,  as  I  have  learned  from  a  London 
catalogue. 

What   a   choice   rascal  was   the   old   Wisbech 
exorcist,   Anthony   Tyrrell;   and  with  what   su- 


ANTHONY  TYRRELL  67 

perb  genius  and  fecundity  of  imagination  did  he 
lie  about  Mary  Queen  of  Scots !  That  man  had 
as  many  religions  as  a  cat  has  lives,  and,  like 
that  animal,  he  had  the  comfortable  trick  of  com- 
ing down  upon  his  feet.  In  this  very  recanta- 
tion he  admits  to  "having  twice  before  renounced 
the  Pope."  A  dime  museum  advertised  among 
its  curiosities  a  man  from  New  Zealand  with  an 
elastic  skin;  Tyrrell  had  an  elastic  conscience, 
and  no  doubt  he  could  have  turned  himself  into 
a  Turk  or  a  wild  man  of  the  jungle  on  a  mo- 
ment's warning.  "Neatness  and  Despatch" 
was  the  motto  of  his  religious  life,  and  his  phi- 
losophy, like  that  of  the  Vicar  of  Bray,  was 
comprehended  in  the  four  lines: 

So  the  bait  be  good  I  can  recant, 

Believe  in  less  or  more, 
For  the  boat  must  tack 

when  strong  winds  blow, 
Or  never  reach  the  shore. 
An  old  and  worldly-minded  sinner  of  long 
ago  wrote  thus :  "Be  not  over  quick  to  speak 
thine  opinion,  nor  too  obstinate  in  maintaining 
it,  but  let  all  thy  words  be  seasoned  with  pru- 
dence. Such  an  opinion  is  neither  one  thing 
nor  another,  but  doth  change  itself  many  times ; 
why  shouldst  thou  bring  thy  neck  to  the  halter 


68  A  FREE  LANCE 

for  a  mere  nothing?  Thou  canst  believe  and 
doubt  much  without  great  clamor.  If  thy  neigh- 
bor compel  thee  to  his  opinion,  vex  not  thyself 
with  contentions,  but  go  merrily  with  him  in 
outward  matters.  A  pinch  of  incense  to  the 
gods  will  matter  little,  since  the  Lord  looketh 
on  the  heart;  and  thy  judgment  shall  be  accord- 
ing to  the  inward  desire." 

DEVELOPMENT  OF  THE  SPIRITUAL  LIFE 

WHAT  a  correct  and  beautiful  picture  of 
the  growth  and  development  of  a  noble 
spiritual  life  is  given  us  by  Confucius  in  the 
following  statement: 

1.  "At  fifteen,  I  had  my  mind  bent  on  learn- 

ing." 

2.  "At  thirty,  I  stood  firm." 

3.  "At  forty,  I  had  no  doubts." 

4.  "At  fifty,  I  knew  the  decrees  of  heaven." 

5.  "At  sixty,  my  ear  was  an  obedient  organ 

for  the  reception  of  truth." 

6.  "At  seventy,  I  could  follow  what  my  heart 

desired,  without  transgressing  what  was 
right."  Legge's  Translation. 

The  early  search  for  truth  gives  rise  to  con- 
viction;  conviction   clears   spiritual   vision,   and 


RELIGIOUS  NATURE  69 

dispels  those  overhanging  mists  of  doubt  which 
render  decision  of  character  and  firmness  of  pur- 
pose and  action  impossible;  a  clear  spiritual 
vision  leads  to  the  discernment  of  truth;  that 
discernment  opens  the  heart  for  its  reception; 
and  the  reception  introduces  such  harmony  into 
man's  entire  nature  that  he  may  safely  trust 
himself  to  choose  and  do  the  right  under  all 
circumstances  and  at  all  times. 

It  is  not  difficult  to  Christianize  the  above  or- 
der of  spiritual  growth  thus : — 

(1)  I  sought  truth,  (2)  and  found  it  in 
Christ.  (3)  Under  its  influence  doubt  and  mis- 
giving disappeared,  (4)  and  growth  in  grace 
followed.  (5)  Growth  in  grace  gave  rise  to 
spiritual  experience,  (6)  and  that  in  turn, 
slowly  crystallized  into  holy  habit  and  uncon- 
scious obedience. 


RELIGIOUS  NATURE 

A  MONG  many  deeply  religious  people,  and 
■**■  especially  among  such  of  them  as  reside  in 
little  villages  and  places  remote  from  the  great 
centres  of  intellectual  activity,  there  prevails  a 
deep-seated  fear  that  not  only  the  church,  but 
religion  itself,  may  be  in  danger  from  the  ad- 


TO  A  FREE  LANCE 

vance  of  modern  thought  and  the  discoveries 
of  modern  science.  And  even  in  large  cities, 
where  the  mental  horizon  is  more  extended,  there 
are  some  who  share  the  same  painful  apprehen- 
sion. For  the  comfort  of  all  such,  of  whatever 
name  or  creed,  I  call  attention  to  a  few  facts,  the 
consideration  of  which  should  be  helpful  and  re- 
assuring. 

I.  Religion  is  an  essential  element  in  man's 
nature,  and  as  such  can  be  destroyed  only  by 
the  destruction  of  human  nature  itself.  Man 
is,  in  every  land  and  age,  a  religious  animal. 
He  shares  his  physical  nature  with  the  wild 
creatures  of  the  forest  and  the  beasts  of  the 
stall;  and  with  them  he  shares  as  well  in  some 
measure  his  intellectual  life.  The  dog  can  think 
and  reason  in  its  way  as  correctly  as  does  its 
master  in  his.  It  is  even  possible  that  some 
dogs  may  reason  better  about  some  things  than 
some  masters,  for  the  dog  understands  dog  life 
from  the  canine  point  of  view,  and  to  that  kind 
of  understanding  no  other  creature  can  attain. 
The  one  thing  that  distinguishes  man  from  beast 
is  not  intellect,  though  differences  even  here  are 
vast.  Man  and  dog  are  both  of  them  intellectual 
beings.     The  distinguishing  factor  in  man,  and 


RELIGIOUS  NATURE  71 

the  one  that  everywhere  appears  at  all  times 
and  under  all  circumstances,  is  the  spiritual  na- 
ture which  he  shares  with  no  other  creature  upon 
the  face  of  the  earth.  So  long  as  he  continues 
to  possess  the  spiritual  nature  he  must  remain  a 
religious  animal.  Man  and  dog,  both  of  them 
think,  but  only  man  can  worship. 

Man  is  what  he  is  by  virtue  of  this  spiritual 
nature  from,  which  he  can  never  escape,  and 
which  no  scientific  discoveries  can  ever  destroy. 
His  religion  may  be  of  one  kind  or  another,  he 
may  worship  grotesque  idols  or  the  only  true  and 
living  God,  but  the  one  thing  that  everywhere 
distinguishes  him  as  a  man  and  separates  him 
from  every  other  animal  is  his  recognition  of 
God.  Even  those  who  repudiate  everything 
connected  with  what  we  commonly  call  religion, 
still,  in  one  way  or  another,  perhaps  without 
their  knowledge  of  the  fact,  entertain  some  meas- 
ure of  religious  feeling,  and  it  may  be  of  re- 
ligious hope.  Thomas  Paine  and  Robert  G.  In- 
gersoll  were  not  Christians.  They  rejected  the 
Gospel  as  we  understand  it,  but  they  were  in 
their  own  way  religious  men.  Both  of  them 
thought  much  and  discoursed  much  upon  reli- 
gious themes.  Even  the  avowed  atheist  who  de- 
nies the  existence  of  God  has  a  spiritual  nature 


72  A  FREE  LANCE 

which  he  is  powerless  to  destroy.  Could  a  man 
destroy  his  spiritual  nature,  he  would  be  no 
longer  a  man,  for  there  would  remain  nothing 
to  distinguish  him  from  the  beasts  of  the  field. 

Ever  at  the  heart  of  doubt  is  the  sweet  con- 
solation which  springs  from  the  assurance  that 
spiritual  things  can  be  questioned  only  by  a 
spiritual  nature.  The  birds  that  build  nests 
over  the  chamber  window  and  sing  their  song 
of  gladness  in  the  early  morning,  never,  so  far 
as  can  be  discovered,  doubt  concerning  the  great 
questions  that  allure  and  torment  the  human 
mind.  Robin  and  wren  never  inquire  into  their 
own  origin  and  destiny.  They  have  no  qualms 
of  conscience.  They  remember  little  of  the  past, 
and  anticipate  less  of  the  future. 

Man  is  troubled  about  spiritual  problems  be- 
cause he  has  a  spiritual  nature.  He  could  not 
doubt  the  existence  of  his  soul  had  he  not  a  soul 
with  which  to  entertain  that  doubt.  He  could 
not  question  the  existence  of  God  were  he  not 
made  in  God's  image.  That  image  is  spiritual, 
and  by  virtue  of  it  he  is  able  to  deal  with 
spiritual  things.  Every  "doctrine  of  grace" 
may  be  doubted.  Man  may  "if"  the  universe. 
Birds  and  animals  can  doubt  nothing  in  the 
psychological  world,  since  spiritual  things  have 


RELIGIOUS  NATURE  73 

no  existence  for  them.  They  have  no  spiritual 
nature.  Our  ability  to  question  should  give  us 
confidence,  for  our  uncertainty  may  be  converted 
into  a  stepping-stone  to  larger  faith.  Reli- 
gious doubts  are  still  religious.  They  introduce 
into  life,  not  less  speculation,  but  a  wider  hori- 
zon. It  is  always  possible  to  follow  Tennyson's 
wise  advice: 

"Cleave  ever  to  the  sunnier  side  of  doubt, 
And  cling  to  faith  beyond  the  forms  of  faith." 

The  "sunnier  side  of  doubt"  is  never  far  re- 
moved from  a  sweet  assurance;  and  "faith  be- 
yond the  forms  of  faith"  is  in  reality  what  we 
so  often  mistake  for  doubt. 

II.  Religion  and  man's  religious  opinions  are 
not  the  same  thing.  Religion  is  an  essential 
element  in  man's  nature,  and  is,  therefore,  inde- 
structible, while  all  our  opinions  and  convictions 
change.  A  Buddhist  may  become  a  Christian, 
but  the  change  may  not  make  him  either  more 
or  less  religious.  He  had  religious  opinions  be- 
fore he  became  a  Christian,  and  after  his  con- 
version he  still  has  religious  opinions,  only  they 
are   different   from   those   he   entertained   prior 


74  A  FREE  LANCE 

to  his  acceptance  of  the  Gospel.  His  religious 
nature  underwent  no  change,  but  the  character 
of  his  convictions  underwent  a  very  great 
change.  We  should  be  careful  not  to  confuse 
religion  with  any  peculiar  theory  of  religion. 
Theology  is  one  thing  and  faith  another.  A 
man  may  have  very  slight  acquaintance  with  the 
various  systems  of  theology,  and  yet  he  may  have 
personal  acquaintance  with  God  in  Christ  as  his 
Father  and  his  Saviour. 

III.  Religion  is  not  dogma.  Mere  subscrip- 
tion to  the  tenets  of  this  or  that  religious  de- 
nomination does  not  make  a  man  more  or  less 
religious.  Of  course  it  is  right  that  a  man 
should  unite  with  whatever  church  he  may  find 
himself  in  agreement  with,  but  religion  is  some- 
thing more  than  church  membership.  There  are 
good  men  in  every  religious  organization,  but  it 
is  not  the  organization  that  makes  them  good; 
it  is  something  much  greater  and  more  substan- 
tial. A  man  might  unite  with  fifty  churches 
and  be  a  bad  man,  and  he  might  remain  separate 
from  all  religious  denominations  and  yet  be  not 
only  a  deeply  religious  man  but  a  Christian  man 
as  well.  Church  membership  may  be  a  duty, 
but    it    does    not    change    character.     Few    men 


RELIGIOUS  NATURE  75 

comprehend  the  doctrinal  standards  of  the 
churches  with  which  they  are  connected,  and  it 
is  not  necessary  that  they  should  understand 
them.  To  be  a  Christian  is  not  to  be  a  religious 
philosopher,  but  a  sincere  and  affectionate  dis- 
ciple of  Jesus  Christ. 

Let  no  timid  soul  fear  the  advance  of  modern 
science.     Nothing  can  destroy  religion  as  such 
because  nothing  can  destroy  man's  religious  na- 
ture.    Our    opinions    should    change    and    will 
change  with  new  light ;  and  we  should  be  willing 
to  change  them  when  larger  knowledge  renders 
such   change   necessary.     The   man   who   values 
his   long-cherished    opinions    more    than   known 
truth  is   certainly  not  more  religious   than  his 
neighbors,  but  he  is  less  of  a  man  for  his  moral 
cowardice   and   for  his   want   of   faith   in   God. 
We  shall  never  all  of  us  think  alike,  but  that 
should  not  discourage  us.     With  faith  in  God, 
service   of   Christ,   and   toil   of  heart  and  hand 
for    our   fellow   men,   we   may   make    religion    a 
practical    thing,    and   life    all   that   God   would 
have  it  to  be. 

I  have  from  time  to  time  jotted  down  in  my 
note-book  such  definitions  of  religion  as  came 
under  my  observation.     These   are  very  differ- 


76  A  FREE  LANCE 

ent,  one  from  another,  and  yet  it  is  quite  possible 
to  trace  in  them  all  the  single  thread  that  gives 
them  a  common  relationship. 

Definitions 

Religion  is  the  knowledge  of  God  and  His  will, 
and  of  our  duties  toward  Him. — john  henry  new- 
man. 

Religion  is  the  play  of  the  Infinite  on  the  finite 
in  the  moral  realm. — lyman  abbott. 

Religion  is  conduct  touched  by  emotion.1 — Mat- 
thew  ARNOLD. 

Religion     is     emotion     touched     by     mortality. — 

GEORGE    M.   BEARD. 

Religion  consists  in  the  perception  of  the  Infinite 
under  such  manifestations  as  are  able  to  influence 
the  moral  character  of  man. — max  muller. 

Religion  is  a  feeling  of  the  supernatural  and  of 
our  relations  to  it. — george  m.  beard. 

Religion  is  the  recognition  of  our  duties  as  Di- 
vine Commands. — kant. 

Religion  is  thought  about  the  Higher  than  self 
worked  through  the  emotions  into  the  acts  of  daily 

life. BARNETT. 

Religion  is  the  infinite  nature  of  duty. — mill. 

Religion  is  the  immediate  feeling  of  dependence 
of  man  on  God. — schleiermacher. 

i  Elsewhere  Matthew  Arnold  defines  religion  as 
"Ethics  heightened,  enkindled,  lit  up  by  feeling." 


RELIGIOUS  NATURE  77 

Religion  is  awe  in  the  presence  of  the  majesty 
of  an  inscrutable  power  in  the  universe. — Herbert 
spencer. 

Religion  is  the  relation  of  man  to  God. — schaff. 

Religion  is  the  consciousness  of  universal  rela- 
tion.  DAVID    A.    WASSON. 

Religion  is  a  feeling  towards  a  supernatural  Pres- 
ence manifesting  itself  in  truth,  goodness,  and 
beauty. — c.  c.  everett. 

Religion  is  the  worship  of  Supreme  Mind  and 
Will,  directing  the  universe  and  holding  moral  rela- 
tions with  human  life. — james  martineau. 

Religion  is  the  upward  flight  of  the  soul  to  what 
it  believes  to  be  Divine. — J.  a.  MaccuLLOCH. 

What  is  religion  if  we  may  not  describe  it  as 
deep  calling  unto  deep?  It  is  the  deep  in  man  re- 
sponding to  the  infinitely  greater  deep  in  God. — 

PERCY  MARTIN. 

Religion  standeth  not  in  wearing  of  a  monk's 
cowl,  but  in  righteousness,  justice  and  well  doing. 

LATIMER. 

Religion  is  the  communion  between  a  worship- 
ping subject  and  a  worshipped  object — the  com- 
munion of  a  man  with  what  he  believes  to  be  a 

God. FAITHS    OF    THE    WORLD. 

Religion  is  the  recognition  of  God  as  an  object 
of  worship,   love,   and  obedience. — anonymous. 
Religion  is  the  life  of  God  in  the  soul  of  man. — 

ANONYMOUS. 


78  A  FREE  LANCE 

Religion  is  the  sense  of  unity  with  the  Infinite 
Whole. — ANONYMOUS. 

GOD  IN  NATURE 

TO  see  God  in  flowers,  the  grass,  the  trees; 
to  hear  Him  in  the  song  of  birds,  and  in 
the  music  of  wind  and  wave;  to  commune  with 
Him  in  the  silence  and  darkness  of  night — thus 
to  hold  fellowship  with  the  Eternal  is  something 
beyond  the  power  of  language  to  describe.  All 
things  are  full  of  God  to  the  soul  that  has 
learned  to  love  Him. 

TUNING  THE  PULPITS 

QUEEN  ELIZABETH  said:  "I  tune  my 
pulpits."  The  pulpits  of  the  Established 
Church  played  in  Elizabeth's  day  the  tune  that 
pleased  her  best.  They  were  all  tuned  to  suit 
her  fancy.  Now,  as  then,  the  State  Church, 
whether  in  England  or  elsewhere,  is  like  a  music- 
box.  Queen,  King,  Parliament  tunes  it,  winds 
it  up,  turns  the  lever,  and  lo !  the  finely  adjusted 
pulpits  start  off  with  what  tune  was  given  them. 


UNFRIENDLY  RELIGION 


R 


ELIGION  is  not  always  a  source  of  com- 
fort and  peace.     There  are  men  to  whom 


THE  SHARP  EDGE  OF  MERCY   79 

it  is  never  a  friend,  but  only  a  dim  and  sheeted 
ghost,  haunting  a  desolate  conscience,  and  work- 
ing an  intermittent  and  spasmodic  repentance 
in  a  still  unregenerate  heart.  Many  a  man  has 
cried  out  to  Religion  from  the  depths  of  his 
heart:  "Hast  thou  come  to  torment  me  before 
my  time?"  Only  when  faith  turns  to  love,  and 
life  derives  from  it  an  altered  color,  has  Re- 
ligion a  renewing  power. 

THE  SHARP  EDGE  OF  MERCY 

T  IKE  a  benediction  from  Heaven,  and  as 
a  gentle  prayer  from  the  tender  heart  of 
a  mother,  glides  the  surgeon's  knife  around  the 
ugly  tumor.  A  skillful  physician  wrapped  his 
sharp  scalpel  in  a  soft  and  yielding  sponge, 
and,  while  he  stroked  the  felon,  lanced  it.  How 
often  we  are  lanced  while  we  are  stroked!  The 
velvet  hand  of  Providence  hurts  in  order  to 
cure.  The  most  compassionate  mercy  has  the 
sharpest  edge. 

"HE  TAUGHT  THEM" 

rpiHE  wonderful  Sermon  on  the  Mount  is  pre- 
*     faced   by   "He   opened   His   mouth."     The 


80  A  FREE  LANCE 

trouble  with  too  many  preachers  is  that  they  do 
not  open  their  mouths.  They  make  a  noise 
without  making  an  impression.  Having  read 
that  "He  opened  His  mouth,"  we  are  not  sur- 
prised to  learn  from  the  next  sentence  that  "He 
taught  them." 


THEOLOGY  AND  PHYSICAL  CONDITION 

JOHN  CALVIN  had  indigestion;  Queen  Mary 
**  of  England  had  dropsy  and  uterine  disor- 
der ;  John  Knox  must  have  had  some  trouble  with 
his  liver;  nearly  all  of  the  men  and  women  who 
found  the  severity  of  God,  as  applied  to  their 
neighbors,  quite  restful,  seem  to  have  had  some 
extenuating  disease.  I  wonder  what  distemper 
our  old  friend  Baxter  had.  Our  theology  seems 
to  take  color  from  our  physical  condition. 


THE  NATIONAL  CHURCH  AND  PARLIAMENT 

rpHAT  the  Saviour  is  the  head  of  the  Kirk 
■*•  of  Scotland,  in  any  temporal,  judicial, 
or  legislative  sense,  is  a  position  which  I  can  dig- 
nify by  no  other  name  than  absurdity.  Par- 
liament is  the  temporal  head  of  the  Church,  from 
whose  acts,  and  from  whose  acts  alone,  it  exists 


CHURCH  AND  PARLIAMENT        81 

as  the  national  church,  and  from  which  alone  it 
derives  all  its  powers." — Lord  President  Hope. 

So  we  are  to  understand  that  in  every  state 
church  (the  Presbyterian  Church  in  Scotland, 
the  Episcopal  Church  in  England,  the  Lutheran 
Church  in  Germany,  the  Roman  Catholic  Church 
in  Spain)  there  are  two  heads  having  equal  au- 
thority, but  controlling  different  departments — 
the  Saviour  and  the  Civil  Government.  Neither 
of  these  may  trench  upon  the  other's  territory. 
Parliament  can  never  allow  the  Saviour  to  inter- 
fere with  the  "temporal,  judicial,  or  legislative" 
interests  of  the  church,  for  these  are  in  the 
keeping  of  Parliament.  On  the  other  hand,  the 
Saviour  cannot  permit  Parliament  to  interfere 
with  the  spiritual  affairs  of  the  church  because 
these  are  His  field  of  operation.  If  the  word 
"blasphemy"  has  any  meaning  whatever,  it 
seems  to  the  writer  of  this  paragraph  that  the 
hateful  word  must  surely  apply  to  the  language 
of  Lord  President  Hope. 

The  National  Church,  according  to  Hope, 
owes  its  existence  not  to  the  Saviour  but  to  Par- 
liament; it  derives  also  its  powers  from  Parlia- 
ment. Such  being  the  case,  it  must  be  bound  to 
serve  and  please  Parliament  first  of  all,  and  to 


82  A  FREE  LANCE 

serve  and  please  the  Saviour  later,  when  such 
service  may  be  possible.  Why  should  it  not  also 
address  its  prayers  to  Parliament? 

Why  not  mark  off  the  "Acts  of  Parliament" 
into  chapters  and  verses,  and  have  them  bound 
into  the  same  volume  with  the  "Acts  of  the 
Apostles,"  for  public  reading  in  the  Sunday 
service,  since  both  "acts"  are  of  equal  author- 
ity? 

The  National  Church  must  hold  and  teach 
such  doctrines  as  Parliament  permits.  That  is 
to  say,  though  the  Saviour  established  the  faith, 
the  National  Church  may  not  embrace  it  unless 
it  has  received  the  endorsement  of  Parliament. 


A  FAITH  THAT  CANNOT  BE  SUNG 

"IVyTEN  no  longer  sing  the  "Dies  irae,  dies  ilia." 
■*■  ■*■  The  hymn  is  still  in  our  hymnals,  but  in 
these  days  we  do  not  sing  it.  A  faith  that 
cannot  be  sung  is  not  a  faith  to  believe. 


ECCLESIASTICAL  PROFANITY 

ri^HE  sin  of  blasphemy  is  by  no  means  con- 

*■"     fined  to  the  irreligious  and  openly  vicious. 

An     Anglican     clergyman     said:     "The     Holy 


INSTITUTIONS  83 

Communion,  administered  by  a  man  not  ordained 
by  a  bishop,  is  no  more  spiritually  effective  than 
a  marriage  ceremony  performed  by  an  actor  in 
a  play  is  legally  binding."  That  is  to  say, 
the  Lord's  Supper  derives  its  spiritual  value  not 
from  the  consecrating  presence  of  the  Master 
but  from  the  endorsement  which  it  receives  or 
may  receive  from  a  certain  sect  of  believers 
known  in  this  country  as  "The  Protestant 
Episcopal  Church."  Could  profane  audacity  go 
further?  I  know  the  name  of  the  man  whose 
wicked  words  have  been  quoted,  but  I  will  in  all 
charity  treat  him  as  the  sons  of  Noah  treated 
their  father  when  through  drunkenness  he  had 
made  an  indecent  exposure  of  his  person.  They 
walked  backward  that  they  might  not  see  his 
shame,  and  so  they  covered  him  from  sight  with 
a  mantle.  I  also  will,  because  of  the  sacred  of- 
fice which  he  fills,  hide,  so  far  as  I  may,  this 
ecclesiastic's  name.     Let  it  not  be  remembered. 


INSTITUTIONS 

INSTITUTIONS  never  reason;  never  attempt 
**•  to  justify  themselves ;  seldom  make  any  seri- 
ous effort  to  improve  themselves ;  they  stand  and 
crumble.     If  the  church  is  an  institution  only,  it 


84  A  FREE  LANCE 

too  must  crumble.  The  only  future  such  a 
church  can  hope  for  must  be  one  of  dust  and 
ashes. 

THE  MARRIAGE  OF  CUPID  AND  PSYCHE 

/^VNE  of  the  most  remarkable  of  Tryphon's 
^-^  gems  engraved  on  sardonyx  represents 
"The  Marriage  of  Cupid  and  Psyche."  The 
thinness  of  the  veil  through  which  the  features 
of  the  happy  ones  are  discerned  with  great 
clearness  is  a  most  difficult  effect  to  produce  in 
stone.  Wedgewood  reproduced  the  gem,  and 
made  all  collectors  familiar  with  its  exquisite 
beauty.  The  subject  is  one  for  the  restricted 
dimensions  of  a  gem.  It  gives  us  so  much  of  the 
nuptial  procession  as  could  be  displayed  upon  a 
surface  nearly  an  inch  and  three-quarters  in 
length.  The  figures  are  well  spaced,  with  no 
suggestion  of  crowding.  They  seem  to  be  just 
arriving  at  the  banquet  where  all  the  gods  wait 
to  do  them  honor. 

It  was  only  when  Psyche  was  truly  married  to 
Cupid  that  it  was  given  them  both  to  know  the 
sweet  delight  of  parental  duty.  Their  first 
child  was  Pleasure.  It  was  only  at  such  a  wed- 
ding that  the  Heavenly  Ones  could  minister. 
A  splendid  banquet  was  spread.     Mercury  lifted 


RIVALRY  85 

the  sparkling  goblet  of  nectar,  and  pressed  it  to 
the  lips  of  Psyche.  All  that  was  mortal  passed 
away.  "Drink,"  said  Mercury,  "and  never 
know  death."  Ganymede  held  the  cup  to  Jove, 
and  Bacchus  served  the  rest  of  the  Divine  Be- 
ings. The  Hours  bedecked  themselves  with 
roses,  and  the  Graces  scattered  perfumes  until 
all  the  air  was  faint  with  ravishment.  The 
Muses  sang  such  songs  of  gladness  that  Apollo 
snatched  his  harp  and  accompanied  them. 
Satyrus  played  the  flute  while  Venus  danced. 
The  air  was  rent  with  shouts  of  praise  while 
Paniscus  recited  heavenly  verses.  And  so  were 
united  the  Pure  Mind  and  Glowing  Passion. 


RIVALRY 

TN  the  northern  part  of  the  Empire  State  is 
■*■  a  little  village  which,  with  a  population  of 
but  three  thousand  souls,  can  boast  of  twelve 
physicians  and  a  "horse  doctor."  The  interest- 
ing thing  in  connection  with  this  generous  sup- 
ply of  medical  skill  is  the  inability  of  these 
learned  gentlemen  to  say,  any  one  of  them,  a 
good  word  for  a  neighbor-practitioner.  I  am 
informed  by  a  witty  fellow  who  amuses  himself 
with  the  foibles  of  mankind  that  each  physician 


86  A  FREE  LANCE 

has  confidently  given  his  medical  rival  just  one 
year  in  which  to  practice,  after  which  brief  sea- 
son it  is  openly  predicted  he  will  quit  the  place 
a  wiser  if  not  a  better  man,  and  seek  "pastures 
new."  For  a  score  of  years  the  prediction  has 
been  annually  renewed,  and  yet  all  these  disciples 
of  Esculapius  are  still  on  the  ground  and  in  good 
fighting  condition.  When  I  was  last  in  the  vil- 
lage, less  than  a  month  ago,  I  inquired  of  the 
senior  combatant,  as  to  who  of  all  the  "frater- 
nity" had  met  with  the  largest  success,  and  was 
informed  that  the  much-to-be-envied  individual 
was  the  "horse  doctor." 


TRUE  BEAUTY  ASTONISHES 

OF  a  certain  very  beautiful  woman  I  heard 
a  man  say:  "I  do  not  love  her — I  could 
not  love  her ;  and  yet  when  I  meet  her  I  am  con- 
scious of  a  shock  as  from  an  electric  battery." 
Those  words  reminded  me  of  the  saying  of  Ba- 
con: "There  is  no  exquisite  beauty  without 
some  strangeness  in  the  proportion."  The 
longer  I  think  upon  it,  the  more  clearly  it  ap- 
pears that  there  is  something  in  the  highest  de- 
velopment of  beauty  that  not  only  charms  but 
astonishes.     Indeed  it  is  doubtful  if  true  beauty 


A  BUTTONLESS  PHILOSOPHER     87 

ever  exists  apart  from  some  degree  of  sur- 
prise. 

A  BUTTONLESS  PHILOSOPHER 

T  THINK  Cobbett  described  himself  when  he 
"*•  called  the  Quakers  "unbaptized  buttonless 
rogues."  I  know  not  if  he  were  baptized  with 
water,  but  he  seems  to  have  had  little  grace; 
and  in  his  later  years  his  clothes  were  none  too 
well  cared  for.  Perhaps  he  possessed  two  shirts, 
which  would  be  one  more  than  Diogenes  is  said 
to  have  owned  when  he  resided  in  his  famous 
tub;  and  he  may  have  had  upon  his  trousers  no 
more  patches  than  that  same  philosopher  dis- 
played upon  his  shabby  cloak;  but  both  men 
belonged  to  the  same  "buttonless"  crowd,  to 
which  the  Quakers  did  not  belong. 

THE  GENTLEMAN 

f  |  THE  gentleman  by  his  personality  alone  at- 
**■     tracts  or  repels.     You  can  come  no  nearer 
to  him  than  he  will  permit. 

MANNERS 

THE  cultivation  of  manners  is  self-culture  at 
its  best,  for  bearing,  deportment,  and  even 


88  A  FREE  LANCE 

appearance  are  a  revelation  of  character. 
Great  importance  attaches  to  a  soldier's  phy- 
sique. The  step  is  scarcely  less  important  than 
the  manual  of  arms.  The  soldier's  physical 
presence  determines  in  no  small  measure  his 
moral  structure  and  his  worth  as  a  fighter.  Sol- 
dierly deportment  will  beget  soldierly  virtues. 
Manners  give  power  to  a  superior  mind.  They 
equip  the  mind  and  insure  it  victory.  Thus 
with  weapons  neither  rude  nor  aggressive  the 
field  is  won. 


A  LITERARY  RESEMBLANCE 

TN  one  way,  and  in  one  way  only,  John  Ruskin 
■*•  and  Walt  Whitman  resemble  each  other :  both 
crowd  an  entire  poem  into  a  title.  Some  of 
Ruskin's  books  are,  "The  Ethics  of  the  Dust," 
"The  Seven  Lamps  of  Architecture,"  and  "The 
Stones  of  Venice."  Could  names  be  more  po- 
etic? Walt  Whitman  calls  some  of  his  poems, 
"From  Noon  to  Starry  Night,"  "Whispers  of 
Heavenly  Death,"  "Proud  Music  of  the  Storm," 
"When  Lilacs  Last  in  the  Dooryard  Bloom'd," 
and  "A  Song  of  the  Rolling  Earth."  If  only 
Whitman's  poems  were  as  poetic  as  their  names 
are  beautiful,  what  marvelous  music  we  should 


NO  LONG  POEM  89 

have  in  the  "Leaves  of  Grass."  In  names  only 
the  two  writers  approach  each  other.  Of  course 
apart  from  these  the  two  have  neither  resem- 
blance nor  sympathy. 


NO  LONG  POEM 

T  INCLINE  to  Poe's  opinion  that  there  is  no 
•*■  such  thing  as  a  long  poem.  Song  is  self- 
limited  in  its  nature.  The  best  singer  can  sing 
but  a  little  while.  To  me  the  long  poems  we  so 
admire  are  only  successions  of  shorter  ones 
strung  upon  a  single  thread.  It  is  not  always 
easy  to  separate  these,  but  the  separation  can  be 
effected  where  there  is  the  requisite  skill  and 
patience.  When  one  comes  to  lines  which  show 
a  flagging  of  interest,  and  are  labored  and  dull, 
it  is  more  than  likely  he  has  come  upon  con- 
nective tissues  uniting  the  smaller  poems.  Be 
this  theory  of  verse  right  or  wrong,  still  the  soul 
of  all  true  poetry  is  song. 

A  TRUE  STANDARD 

TENRY  I  made  the  length  of  his  own  arm 
*  ■■'  the  standard  measure  throughout  England. 
President  Roosevelt  strove  to  make  his  own  fool- 


90  A  FREE  LANCE 

ish  whims  and  humiliating  conceits  the  measure 
of  his  country's  rights  and  privileges.  Henry's 
yard  was  of  real  service  to  his  age  and  king- 
dom, but  of  what  possible  use  could  the  bluster 
and  farrago  of  our  American  madcap  be  to  a 
nation  ashamed  of  his  selfish  exploits  and  tur- 
bulent demagogism? 

PENANCE 

T  N  New  England  there  are  many  old  women  of 
*  various  societies  for  reforming  the  world  who 
see  precisely  what  should  be  done,  and  who  go 
about  day  and  night  striving  to  induce  others 
to  do  it.  They  are  like  some  women  of  an 
earlier  time  who,  when  their  consciences  reproved 
them  for  their  many  sins,  returned  home  from 
the  preaching  that  had  awakened  them,  to  make 
their  servants  do  vigorous  penance. 

STYLE 

IN  these  days  much  is  said  about  literary  style, 
and  we  are  advised  to  read  this  author  or 
that  in  order  that  we  may  acquire  something  of 
the  excellent  style  of  which  he  is  master.  But  a 
good  style  is  a  very  simple  thing,  not  to  be  ob- 


SENECA'S  PILOT  91 

tained  by  great  mental  exertion.  Swift  covered 
the  ground  when  he  defined  a  good  style  as  noth- 
ing more  than  "proper  words  in  proper  places." 
The  man  who  says  clearly  and  in  a  forcible  way 
precisely  what  he  wants  to  say  is  a  good  styl- 
ist; and  he  may  be  safely  followed,  so  far  as 
the  following  of  any  man  is  possible.  There  is 
no  "trick  of  style."  Nothing  is  good  that  is 
not  straightforward.  That  composition  is  the 
best  which  most  perfectly  fits  the  word  to  the 
place. 

SENECA'S  PILOT 

TT  was  Seneca's  Pilot  who  said,  "0  Neptune, 
-*■  you  may  save  me  if  you  will;  you  may  sink 
me  if  you  will;  but  whatever  happens,  I  shall 
keep  my  rudder  true."  That  is  the  best  thing 
any  one  can  say  on  land  or  sea,  for  on  both 
one  is  a  pilot.  The  author  of  "Adam  Bede"  has 
the  same  thought:  "For  my  part,  I  think  it's 
better  to  see  when  your  perpendicular's  true 
than  to  see  a  ghost."  Duty  may  be,  in  any- 
given  case,  difficult  to  determine,  but  the  pur- 
pose to  do  it  is  always  simple  and  direct.  Never 
in  all  the  world  is  a  ghost  so  worth  seeing  as  is 


92  A  FREE  LANCE 

the  straight  line  of  duty  chosen  first  of  all,  and 
well  done  so  far  as  in  the  doer  lies  the  deed. 


THE  SENSE  OF  SOUND  IN  LITERATURE 

NOT  even  Shakespeare's  "garden  of  words" 
in  Richard  II,  to  use  a  phrase  from  Pater, 
gives  me  so  great  a  delight  as  I  at  once  receive 
from  the  sense  of  sound  in  noble  composition. 
Goethe  thought  that  the  eye  rather  than  the  ear 
was  the  organ  through  which  one  might  most 
completely  seize  and  enjoy  the  right  word.  But 
to  me  music  is  the  essential  element  in  all  worthy 
composition.  I  would  hear  in  every  line  the  tri- 
umphant shout,  and  the  no  less  tender  pleading 
of  a  mighty  chorus  of  singing  words — flute,  viol, 
dulcimer,  and  all  soul-stirring  instruments 
changed  as  by  magic  into  living,  breathing  words. 
Only  the  poet  can  give  us  these,  and  we  enjoy 
them  only  by  so  much  of  the  poet  as  we  have 
within  our  own  souls. 


GENIUS 

THAT   genius   sometimes   takes   the  place  of 
hard  work  may  be  seen  by  a  glance  at  the 


GENIUS  93 

life  and  at  the  novels  of  Lever.     He  wrote  all 
his  books  at  a  dash,  and  at  such  odd  moments 
as  he  could  command.     He  never  troubled  him- 
self to  examine  proof-sheets.     Any  of  his  books 
might  have   been   printed  upside-down   for  any 
care  he  had  about  the  matter.     So  soon  as  the 
manuscript  was  out  of  his  hands,  he  dismissed  it 
from  his  thoughts.     He  even  forgot  the  names 
of  his  books,  and  could  not  tell  whether  he  had 
or  had  not  written  a  book  brought  to  his  atten- 
tion.    His  life  was   a  mixture  of  pretty  much 
everything:  he  was  a  doctor,  a  novelist,  the  ed- 
itor of  a  paper,  a  gamester,  and  the  driver  of  a 
four-in-hand.     He  had  charge  of  an  emigrant 
ship,  lived  for  a  time  with  the  Indians  in  Canada, 
was  a  fugitive  from  his  creditors,  and  kept  open 
house   for  everybody.     He  was   happy-go-lucky 
from   cradle   to   grave.     Nothing  but   genius — 
clear,    unqualified,    indisputable    genius — pulled 
him   through.     But  would  not  his  novels  have 
been  better  had  he  given  himself  to  study?     No, 
I  do  not  believe  that  Lever  would  have  given  us 
a  single  book  had  he  lived  a  more  orderly  life. 
Anything  like  a  definite  plan  would  have  spoiled 
his  work.     Critics  used  to  call  his  work  ephem- 
eral; they  said   that   another  generation  would 
forget  that  he  ever  lived ;  that  his  reputation  was 


94  A  FREE  LANCE 

a  bubble,  and  that  it  would  soon  burst.  The 
critics  were  men  of  well-regulated  lives,  who 
knew  all  there  was  to  be  known  about  every- 
thing. But  they  were  mistaken  in  their  esti- 
mate of  Lever.  They  could  not  understand  his 
life,  nor  yet  could  they  make  very  much  of  his 
work.  They  were  analytical  men,  men  of  method 
and  of  form  and  classification.  They  loved  es- 
tablished rules  and  conventionalities.  No  doubt 
they  rose  every  morning  at  the  same  hour,  and 
went  to  bed  every  evening  at  ten  o'clock.  What 
could  they  see  that  was  good  in  the  wild, 
free  life  of  Lever?  Well,  they  are  dead, 
and  the  world  remembers  them  not;  but  the 
Irish  novelist  was  a  man  of  genius,  and  he  will 
live. 


DISCERNMENT  OF  BEAUTY 

TT  is  evidence  of  fine  artistic  temperament  and 
*  training  that  one  can  see  beauty  where  others 
see  no  beauty  at  all.  In  the  same  way,  it  is  evi- 
dence of  fine  spiritual  qualities  and  ethical  train- 
ing that  one  can  see  moral  beauty  and  lovely 
qualities  of  heart  and  mind  in  a  man's  life,  where 
others  behold  only  the  dull  and  unattractive  level 


THE  FIVE  BEST  POEMS  95 

of  the  commonplace,  or  even,  it  may  be,  the  ugli- 
ness of  a  moral  desert. 


THE  FIVE  BEST  POEMS  IN  THE  ENGLISH 
LANGUAGE 

VTO  two  persons,  were  they  called  upon  to 
-*-^  name  the  five  best  poems  in  the  English 
language,  would  make  precisely  the  same  selec- 
tion. Shelley  has  given  us  some  of  the  finest 
verses  in  our  language,  but,  being  limited  to  the 
narrow  compass  of  five  metrical  compositions,  I 
should  not  select  any  of  that  poet's  work.  Mil- 
ton's poems  are  among  the  very  best,  but  our 
age  has  grown  away  from  him,  and,  great  as  he 
is,  he  fails  of  providing  us  the  satisfaction  derived 
from  the  reading  of  some  of  the  humbler  lines 
of  poets  not  so  well  known.  I  should  select 
the  following  poems,  and  in  the  order  given 
below : 


1.  Hamlet — Shakespeare. 

2.  Childe  Harold's  Pilgrimage — byron. 

3.  Elegy  Written  in  a  Country  Churchyard 

— GRAY. 


96  A  FREE  LANCE 

4.  The  Rime  of  the  Ancient  Mariner — cole- 

kidge. 

5.  The  Vision  of  Sir  Launfal — lowell. 

A  PERFECT  TEMPERAMENT 

t  ■  THAT  woman  has  the  most  symmetrical,  bal- 
**■  anced,  wholesome  and  perfect  temperament 
who,  with  the  sweetness  of  womanhood,  unites 
the  strength  of  manhood;  and  that  man  has  the 
most  complete  and  rounded  temperament  who, 
to  the  strength  of  manhood,  joins  the  fineness, 
gentleness  and  sweetness  of  womanhood. 


CIVILIZATION 


f  I  THE  vast  deposit  of  our  civilization  is  pass- 
**■  ing  from  the  trained  aristocracies  to  the 
untrained  masses.  What  is  to  be  the  fate  of 
that  deposit?  No  man  who  loves  his  race  or 
even  his  own  smaller  country  can  wholly  free  his 
mind  from  grave  apprehension.  The  sub- 
merged masses  are  coming  to  the  surface  with- 
out any  preparation  for  the  new  duties  that 
await  them.  The  bull  in  the  china-shop  re- 
mained a  bull,  but  the  shop  underwent  a  most 


CIVILIZATION  97 

disastrous  change.  Millions  of  people  in  the 
lower  walks  of  life  are  now  coming  into  possession 
of  privileges  and  duties  they  neither  understand 
nor  appreciate.  Is  civilization  to  go  the  way  of 
the  china-shop? 

II 

The  men  who  traveled  on  the  Titanic  believed 
that  ship  unsinkable,  and  they  believed  it  even 
when  the  great  vessel  was  making  ready  for  its 
final  plunge.  Men  are  equally  sure  that  our 
present  civilization  is  imperishable,  and  yet  there 
are  now  on  every  side  ominous  signs  that  should 
awaken  in  thoughtful  minds  anxiety  if  not  ac- 
tual alarm.  The  tap-root  of  every  civilization 
is  buried  deep  in  its  aristocracies ;  these  are  the 
depositories  of  ancient  superiorities.  Under  the 
leveling  processes  of  Democracy  all  these  are 
rapidly  disappearing.  What  is  to  take  their 
place  in  this  world,  receiving  and  preserving  the 
sacred  deposit  of  the  ages? 

Ill 

Civilizations  have  passed  away,  some  of  them 
leaving  to  our  world  treasures  in  art  and  letters 
that  must  always  delight  the  cultivated  mind. 
Our  present  civilization  in  no  essential  feature 


98  A  FREE  LANCE 

differs  from  those  that  have  preceded  it.  It  is 
disintegrating;  and  all  history  shows  us  that, 
while  the  process  of  disintegration  may  be  at 
first,  and  for  a  long  time,  slow,  a  fearful  mo- 
mentum is  acquired.  The  final  plunge,  alike  in 
the  Atlantic  liner  and  in  the  great  Ship  of  State, 
must  be  sudden.  It  may  be  in  one  case  an  ice- 
berg that  brings  about  the  catastrophe,  and  in 
the  other  some  extensive  strike  of  workmen,  a 
contested  election,  internal  dissension,  or  the 
treachery  of  an  ambitious  man.  Unless  some 
force  can  be  brought  to  bear  capable  of  re- 
sisting the  downward  leveling  of  Democ- 
racy, the  final  plunge  must  be  sooner  or  later 
taken. 

COOPERATION 

WHAT  we  call  cooperation  is  usually  noth- 
ing but  compromise,  and  compromise 
means  the  annihilation  of  personality.  I  am 
weary  of  patched-up  agreements  that  destroy 
individual  action  and  purpose.  The  men  who 
have  influenced  others  have  acted  apart  from 
them.  The  strong  swimmer  sinks  when  he  is 
seized  in  a  death-grip  by  the  drowning  man  he 
would  save.     We  help  men  most  when  we  stand 


JEFFERSON  99 

apart  from  them ;  when  we  grasp  them,  and  will 
not  permit  them  to  grasp  us. 

JEFFERSON 

JEFFERSON  was  always,  both  by  nature  and 
by  association  with  men  of  his  way  of  think- 
ing, a  "leader  of  the  reds";  and  it  is  after  his 
model  rather  than  after  that  of  Washington 
and  Hamilton  that  our  country  has  shaped  its 
political  life  and  development.  Jefferson  was  a 
centre  of  disturbance  both  in  the  council  cham- 
ber and  in  the  political  life  of  the  day  in  which 
he  lived.  His  conception  of  republican  simplic- 
ity left  out  of  view  every  thing  like  dignity  of 
bearing,  stateliness,  and  fine  deportment.  He 
looked  upon  these  with  suspicion.  It  is  to  him, 
and  not  to  Washington,  that  we  owe  much  of 
the  rudeness  and  uncouthness  of  our  present-day 
methods  of  governing.  He  could  not  endure  the 
forms  and  ceremonies  of  older  nations.  He  even 
pronounced  the  etiquette  and  formalities  attend- 
ing the  first  inauguration  of  Washington  to  be 
"not  in  character  with  the  simplicity  of  repub- 
lican government."  He  said  that  these  all  sa- 
vored of  European  courts. 

He  was  by  nature  a  revolutionist,  an  agitator, 
and  a  disturber  of  old  ideas  and  old  ways.     He 


100  A  FREE  LANCE 

called  the  French  Revolution  a  "beautiful  revo- 
lution," and  expressed  the  hope  that  it  would 
"spread  all  over  the  earth."  He  looked  for 
much  good  from  the  lawlessness  of  the  French, 
even  in  that  evil  time  when  they  leveled  in  the 
dust  all  established  institutions,  when  they  trod 
upon  order  and  religion,  and  when  they  repudi- 
ated decency  itself.  He  still  hoped,  and  even 
praised,  when  one  of  the  most  kindly  disposed  of 
sovereigns  was  brutally  murdered.  When  the 
massacres  were  at  their  height  Jefferson  wrote  a 
friend  (Mr.  Short)  such  words  as  these: — 

"In  the  struggle  which  was  necessary,  many 
guilty  persons  fell  without  the  forms  of  trial, 
and,  with  them,  some  innocent.  These  I  deplore 
as  much  as  anybody,  and  shall  deplore  some  of 
them  to  the  day  of  my  death.  But  I  deplore 
them  as  I  should  have  done  had  they  fallen  in 
battle.  .  .  .  The  liberty  of  the  whole  earth 
was  depending  on  the  issue  of  the  contest,  and 
was  ever  such  a  prize  won  with  so  little  inno- 
cent blood?"  Think  of  it!  "The  whole  earth 
was  depending  on  the  issue"  of  unchecked  and 
merciless  massacre  for  the  prize  of  popular  lib- 
erty !  In  Jefferson's  eyes  the  thousands  of  mur- 
ders committed  in  all  parts  of  France  were  "only 
a  little  innocent  blood." 


OUR  NATIONAL  EMBLEM         101 

There  were  among  the  American  patriots  of 
1776  some  who  foresaw  the  peril  of  Jefferson's 
views.  Washington  and  Hamilton  were  not  the 
only  ones  who  were  awake  to  the  danger.  John 
Adams,  late  in  life,  reviewing  the  past,  described 
the  French  Revolution  as  a  monstrosity,  and  he 
traced  it  to  the  effect  produced  in  France  by  the 
American  Revolution.  He  regretted  his  own 
early  ultra-democratic  views,  and  he  did  what  he 
could  to  undo  some  of  his  work  which,  in  the 
light  of  a  more  mature  judgment,  seemed  to  him 
incautious  if  not  actually  unwise ;  but  he  soothed 
his  conscience  by  saying  in  a  letter  to  an  old 
friend,  "I  meant  well."  1 

OUR  NATIONAL  EMBLEM 

/^VUR  American  Republic  made  a  grotesque 
^-^  mistake  when  it  chose  for  its  national  em- 
blem the  Roman  eagle.  The  eagle  is  venture- 
some, predatory,  and  warlike,  and  in  no  way 
does  it  denote  the  peace,  business  tact,  sagacity, 
enterprise,  and  common  sense  which  are  distin- 
guishing features  of  our  Republic.  The  eagle 
is  by  consent  of  all  men  King  of  Birds.  But 
what  have  we  to  do  with  kings?  The  only  king 
we  ever  had,  we  thrust  from  our  shores  with 
ijotm  Adams's  Works,  vol.  ii,  p.  240, 


102  A  FREE  LANCE 

the  not  over-civil,  and  certainly  in  no  wise  true 
pronouncement:     "All   men    are   born    free   and 
equal."     The  eagle   is   not   a   suitable  bird   for 
us.     Our  national  emblem  should  be,  beyond  all 
question,     the     Thanksgiving    turkey.     A    not 
over-patriotic  wit,  looking  over  my  shoulder,  in- 
sists that  "for  obvious  reasons  the  lordly  pea- 
cock is  the  true  and  only  emblem  of  our  Great 
Western    Republic;"    but    the    simple    fact   that 
the  peacock  is  "lordly"  would  seem  to  be  a  seri- 
ous disqualification.     The  unromantic  and  good- 
natured  barnyard   fowl  might  not  look  so  im- 
posing upon   our  flag  and  coin  as  a  first-class 
Fourth-of-July  Bird  of  Freedom,  but  it  is,  never- 
theless,   a    more    thoroughly   American    symbol. 
Of  course  the  turkey  is  native  to  the  soil,  as  is 
also    the   eagle,   and   we   cannot   forget   that    a 
very  large  percentage  of  the  citizens  of  this  re- 
public   came    to    our    country    from    somewhere 
else,  and  that  their  children  speak  with  a  rich 
and  melodious  brogue  not  by  any  means  pecul- 
iarly American.     But  it  is  not  at  all  necessary 
that  the  emblem  should  fit  the  thing  represented 
too   closely.     In  fact,  in  this  case,  it  would  be 
just   as   well,   I   think,  that   the   emblem   should 
not  remind  us  too  forcibly  of  that  for  which  it 
stands. 


OUR  NATIONAL  EMBLEM         103 

Of  all  days,  Thanksgiving  Day  is  the  most 
distinctively  American;  and  of  that  day  the  tur- 
key is  the  one  and  only  possible  emblem.  Every 
good  American  enjoys  a  distinct  advantage  over 
the  inhabitants  of  other  lands.  He  can  eat  his 
national  bird,  and  even  pick  its  bones.  But  the 
very  thought  of  roast  eagle  with  cranberry 
sauce  is  too  absurd  to  be  considered  a  single 
moment.  Not  ten  thousand  eagles  could  make 
so  much  as  a  fraction  of  a  New  England 
Thanksgiving  dinner.  But  any  decent  fowl, 
weighing,  say,  six  or  eight  pounds  (a  mere 
charity  turkey),  might,  with  little  or  no  diffi- 
culty, and  without  even  so  much  as  a  teaspoon- 
ful  of  cranberry  sauce,  inaugurate  a  very  re- 
spectable repast.  In  the  window  of  a  taxider- 
mist the  eagle  would  seem  much  better  than 
the  turkey;  but  the  Roman  bird  has  absolutely 
no  right  to  a  place  on  our  postage-stamps,  our 
coins,  or  our  flag.  The  barnyard  fowl,  with 
its  crop  well  filled  with  corn  and  whatever  else 
the  crop  of  a  domestic  bird  is  likely  to  hold,  is 
the  true  emblem  of  our  American  Republic. 

It  will  be  conceded  that  the  eagle  can  be  put 
to  more  romantic  uses  than  any  turkey  we  know 
of  could  be  put  to.  Other  nations  have  adopted 
the  eagle,  but,  so  far  as  we  know,  not  one  nation 


104  A  FREE  LANCE 

on  all  the  face  of  the  earth  has  ever  chosen  the 
turkey.  The  Emperor  Napoleon,  delivering  the 
colors  to  his  troops,  said :  "Soldiers  !  take  again 
the  eagles  which  have  so  often  led  our  fathers  to 
glory."  Think  for  one  moment  of  associating 
turkeys  with  glory!  What  effect  would  it  have 
had  upon  the  French  troops  had  the  Emperor 
addressed  them  thus :  "Soldiers  !  take  again  the 
barnyard  fowls  which  have  so  often  led  our 
fathers  to  glory"?  No  doubt  they  would  have 
laughed  themselves  to  death;  and  perhaps  that 
would  have  been  a  very  good  way  (as  good  as 
some  other  ways)  of  dying  for  the  French 
colors. 

Americans  have  stolen  a  march  on  Johnnie 
Crapaud,  whose  Emperor  described  his  flag  as 
having  led  the  fathers  and  Johnnie  himself,  in 
gilt  and  fustian,  to  glory ;  but  an  American,  not 
to  be  outdone  by  any  Frenchman,  actually 
named  his  bunting  glory  itself.  Dr.  Thomas 
Dunn  English,  who  should  have  changed  his 
family  name  to  something  more  patriotic,  once 
wrote  what  he  hoped  might  prove  a  national 
song,  and  in  time  supplant  the  unsingable  "Star- 
Spangled  Banner."  He  wrote  these  even  more 
unsingable  lines; 


OUR  NATIONAL  EMBLEM         105 

"Though  crowns  may  break  and  thrones  may  fall, 
Though  changes  may  the  world  appall, 
Our  banner  shall  survive  them  all 

And  ever  live  in  story. 
The  rainbow  of  a  rescued  land, 
Where  freemen  brave  together  stand, 
With  truth  and  courage  hand  in  hand, 

Floats  proudly  here,  Old  Glory. 

Refrain 
"Old  Glory,  Old  Glory, 
Float  proudly  here,  Old  Glory. 
Old    Glory!    Old    Glory!      Hurrah    for    you,    Old 
Glory! 

"In  days  we  fought  with  George  the  Third, 
When  Independence  was  the  word, 
One  voice,  from  rising  manhood  heard 

As  well  as  old  age  hoary. 
One  purpose  then  we  had  in  view, 
To  form  of  states  a  Union  true, 
And   eyes   and   hearts   were   turned   to   you, 

Our  banner,  grand  Old  Glory. 

Refrain 
"Old  Glory,  Old  Glory, 
Our  banner,  grand  Old  Glory. 

Old    Glory!     Old    Glory!     Hurrah    for    you,    Old 
Glory!" 


106  A  FREE  LANCE 

The  "Old  Glory"  song,  like  many  another  na- 
tional song,  is  boastful  and  vainglorious.  An 
added  calamity  was  the  music  to  which  it  was  set, 
and  which  may  be  truthfully  described  as  gran- 
diose and  pretentious.  It  was  later  set  to  better 
music,  but  it  died  an  early  yet  natural  death. 
Still,  Dr.  English  will  be  remembered  for  many 
a  year  to  come  because  of  that  one  felicitous 
name,  "Old  Glory,"  and  because  of  "Ben  Bolt." 
He  should  be  remembered  also,  so  I  think,  be- 
cause of  his  "Book  of  Battle  Lyrics."  The 
word  "old,"  as  used  by  Dr.  English,  is  expres- 
sive of  endearment  and  not  of  age.  Our  flag  is 
young.  The  first  legislative  movement  looking 
to  the  formation  of  a  national  flag  was  made 
June  14,  1777,  and  resulted  in  the  following 
resolution : — 

"Resolved,  That  the  flag  of  the  thirteen  United 
States  be  thirteen  stripes,  alternate  red  and  white; 
that  the  Union  be  thirteen  stars,  white,  in  a  blue 
field,  representing  a  new  constellation." 

Public  proclamation  of  the  flag  was  made  Sep- 
tember 3,  1777;  and  the  "Stars  and  Stripes" 
floated  for  the  first  time  over  Fort  Schuyler, 
located  on  the  site  of  the  present  village  of 
Rome,  Oneida  County,  New  York.     Our  flag  has 


OUR  NATIONAL  EMBLEM         107 

been  changed  many  times  by  the  addition  of  new 
stars  as  new  States  have  been  received  into  the 
Union.  Up  to  February  24,  1866,  every  flag 
hoisted  over  our  Capitol  at  Washington  had 
been  manufactured  from  English  bunting.  On 
the  day  named,  the  first  wholly  American  flag 
was  given  to  the  breeze,  waving  over  the  seat  of 
our  National  Government  at  Washington. 

There  is  now  a  tendency  in  the  United  States 
(a  tendency  emphasized  by  various  patriotic  so- 
cieties) to  fall  down  and  worship  the  flag,  while 
at  the  same  time  there  is  but  little  corresponding 
wish   to  render   that  flag  supremely  worthy  of 
adoring  love.     One  may  not  advertise  his  busi- 
ness, be  it  one  of  the  most  honorable  in  all  the 
world,   upon   either  the   front   or  the   back   of 
"Old  Glory;"  but  he  may  put,  without  rebuke, 
that  same  "Old  Glory"  to  most  inglorious  uses. 
We  are  truly  a  thoughtless,  careless  people.     A 
foreigner  was   arrested   for   rubbing  dust   from 
the  floor  with  a  worn  and  frayed  sample  of  the 
"Stars  and  Stripes."     He  was  a  very  ignorant 
man,  and  had  no  thought  of  insulting  either  the 
nation  or  its  standard.     To  him  a  dilapidated 
banner  of   any   country   was   suitable   only   for 
scrubbing  and  mopping  uses.     He  was  arrested 
for  an  unintended  insult  which  it  was  said  he  had 


108  A  FREE  LANCE 

offered  the  American  flag ;  but  the  man  who  had 
him  arrested  (no  doubt  for  political  effect)  was 
permitted  to  insult  the  flag  every  day  in  the 
year  by  associating  it  with  all  kinds  of  political 
rottenness. 

An  effort  is  now  being  made  to  teach  our  chil- 
dren to  love  their  country  by  shaking  flags  in 
front  of  them,  and  by  having  them  sing  in  the 
public  schools  "America"  and  "The  Star-Span- 
gled Banner."  Only  when  we  illustrate  in  our 
lives  what  we  would  have  operative  in  the  lives 
of  our  children  can  we  look  for  good  citizenship 
in  the  rising  generation.  Speech-making,  flag- 
waving,  and  song-singing  are  well  enough  in 
their  places,  but  good  citizenship  cannot  be  man- 
ufactured by  any  mechanical  contrivance  or  per- 
functory performance.  So  long  as  the  children 
in  our  schools  see  that  we  mean  by  the  country 
a  political  party,  they  will  read  into  the  tri-col- 
ored  bunting  nothing  better  than  party  feeling. 

I  once  heard  a  distinguished  orator  declare 
on  the  public  platform  that  Tammany  Hall  was 
"an  association  of  patriotic  and  unselfish  Amer- 
ican citizens  who  were  banded  together  to  secure 
to  New  York  City,  and  incidentally  to  the  State, 
and  even  to  the  entire  country,  good  govern- 
ment, and  the  impartial  administration  of  just 


OUR  NATIONAL  EMBLEM         109 

and  reasonable  laws."  The  statement  sand- 
bagged the  entire  audience.  Not  a  word  was 
said.  All  were  silent  as  the  grave.  There  were 
no  sounds  of  approval,  nor  were  there  any  of 
disapproval.  Three  thousand  persons  sat 
stunned  by  that  statement.  But  the  listeners 
were  only  stunned  and  not  permanently  para- 
lyzed. In  a  few  moments  something  like  ap- 
plause was  heard;  but  before  the  applause  could 
become  general,  gravity  gave  way,  and  the  hall 
resounded  with  uproarious  laughter.  How  many 
flags  do  you  think  it  would  require  to  instill  love 
of  country  and  respect  for  our  institutions  into 
the  minds  of  children  taught  to  believe  such  a 
statement? 

An  officious  and  over-patriotic  teacher  in  a 
school  connected  with  Trinity  Chapel  in  the  City 
of  New  York  got  it  into  his  head  that  one  of 
the  most  important  of  the  many  important  things 
in  a  well-arranged  curriculum  is  the  adoration 
of  the  American  flag.  At  Trinity  Chapel,  when 
the  children  file  out  at  the  close  of  the  session, 
all  "salute  the  flag."  A  little  Italian  boy 
stalked  past  the  flag  with  head  erect.  The  head- 
master requested  the  youth  to  do  the  usual  obei- 
sance, and  received  from  him  only  a  defiant  look. 
The  child  refused  to  salute  what  was  to  him  a 


110  A  FREE  LANCE 

foreign  flag,  and  at  once  the  master  proceeded 
to  administer  what  seemed  to  him  to  be  just  and 
reasonable  punishment.  A  moderate  riot  re- 
sulted, in  which  fists  and  even  a  few  bricks  and 
stones  were  used,  but  the  little  fellow  did  not  mock 
with  false  reverence  the  symbol  of  our  American 
institutions.  It  is  more  than  likely  the  flag  lost 
rather  than  gained  by  that  headmaster's  super- 
ficial patriotism. 

The  value  of  the  flag  lies  wholly  in  what  it 
represents.  To  a  Turk  the  Stars  and  Stripes 
may  mean  very  little.  To  an  Italian  not  in 
sympathy  with  our  traditions  and  institutions, 
it  may  represent  much  that  is  even  repellent. 
So  long  as  a  stranger  observes  our  laws  and  con- 
ducts himself  in  such  a  way  as  to  awaken  no 
animosity  or  ill-will,  we  can  well  afford  to  ex- 
cuse him  from  foolish  dissimulations  with  regard 
to  our  flag  and  armorial  bearings. 

I  suppose  it  is  of  no  great  consequence  what 
device  or  emblem  is  chosen  for  flag,  coin,  or  es- 
cutcheon. An  eagle  is  as  good  as  a  crocodile, 
and  a  Thanksgiving  turkey  would  be  in  time  as 
sacred  in  the  eyes  of  an  American  as  is  the  holy 
dragon  to  the  vision  of  a  native  of  China.  Ger- 
many has  a  double  eagle;  England  and  Persia 
have,  each  of  them,  a  lion;  and  Siam  rejoices  in 


OUR  NATIONAL  EMBLEM         111 

an  elephant.  The  appropriate  turkey,  once  at 
roost  upon  our  national  arms,  would,  I  am  sure, 
seem  to  us  quite  as  sacred  as  the  more  highly 
appreciated  eagle  now  appears  to  be. 

The  real  flag  is  not  a  matter  of  bunting  only, 
nor  is  it  a  matter  of  stars,  stripes,  eagle,  lion, 
dragon,  elephant,  or  aught  else.     Neither  Betsy 
Ross  nor  any  other  woman  ever  was  or  could  be 
the  mother  of  "Old  Glory."     They  have  in  Phila- 
delphia what  they  call  "The  Flag  House."     It 
is  the  house  in  which  Betsy  Ross  once  lived,  and 
in  which  she  (so  it  is  said)  made,  at  the  request 
of   Washington,    the   first    flag   of   the   United 
States.     The    "patriotic   landmark,"    as    it   was 
called  in  circulars  and  on  invitations  to  contrib- 
ute towards  its  purchase,  has  been  secured  by 
the    "Betsy    Ross    Memorial   Association;"  and 
already   it   has   become   the  Mecca  of  patriotic 
pilgrims.     But   the   real   building   so   sacred   to 
Americans  is  not  the  shabby  little  wooden  struc- 
ture on  Arch  street  in  Philadelphia:  it  is  the 
much  nobler  building  that  patriotic  imagination 
has  constructed  in  the  minds  and  hearts  of  Amer- 
icans.    Imagination   makes   everything  that   we 
are  and  all  we  have.     Red,  white,  and  blue  bunt- 
ings count  for  nothing  unless  there  be  observed 
a    certain    arrangement   in   colors.     We   follow 


112  A  FREE  LANCE 

the  pattern,  for  it  is  into  that  we  have  breathed 
the  love,  the  romance,  and  the  loyalty  of  our 
hearts.  It  is  the  pattern  that  we  have  idealized, 
and  not  the  rude  material  of  the  bunting. 
Idealization  of  that  pattern  gives  us  the  symbol 
we  revere.  In  the  same  way  imagination  has 
transformed  for  us  a  rapacious  and  not-over- 
clean  bird  of  prey  into  a  noble  and  magnificent 
creature  grasping  in  its  fierce  talons  at  once  the 
olive  branch  of  peace  and  the  sharp  arrows  of 
war.  In  some  parts  of  the  country  the  eagle 
is  protected  by  law.  It  may  not  be  hunted  and 
shot  as  are  other  birds.  Imagination  makes  the 
flag,  the  escutcheon,  the  symbol,  and  everything 
else;  and  what  it  makes  them  they  are.  Image 
or  outline  in  your  mind  what  you  hold  to  be 
sacred,  and  at  once  hallowed  associations  spring 
up  on  every  side,  and  grow  thick  and  fast. 

SWEDENBORG  AS  A  POET 

T71  MERSON  thinks  that  Swedenborg  will  be- 
-*-^  come  popular  when  men  no  longer  regard 
him  as  a  "sectarian,"  and  account  him  a  poet.1 
I  much  doubt  the  future  popularity  of  the  great 
Swedish  seer,  but  I  have  for  a  long  time  viewed 
i  Journals  of  Ralph  Waldo  Emerson,  1836-1838,  p.  70. 


A  COLLEGE  OF  JOURNALISM     113 

him  as  a  poet.  You  must  get  beyond  his  dog- 
matism if  jou  would  find  delight  in  his  heavenly 
vision.  Swedenborg  is  one  of  the  greatest  of 
poets.  The  man  who  takes  Swedenborg  at  his 
own  appraisement  exchanges  poetic  rapture  for 
poor  and  literal  statements  about  a  world  of 
which  we  know  but  little.  It  is  just  because  men 
do  take  him  at  his  own  appraisement  that  they 
get  no  further  than  the  New  Jerusalem  Church, 
and  never  see  the  poetic  beauty  of  his  visions  and 
apocalyptic  disclosures.  Swedenborg  is  a  poet; 
as  such  I  take  him,  and  as  such  I  read  him. 

A  COLLEGE  OF  JOURNALISM 

A  LL  things  come  round  in  due  time.  I  de- 
*  *"  livered  in  the  First  Congregational  Church 
of  Portland,  Oregon,  March  13,  1883,  a  sermon 
on  "Editors  and  Newspapers,"  which  was  soon 
after  printed  in  pamphlet  form.  In  that  ser- 
mon I  recommended  the  establishment  of  a  Col- 
lege of  Journalism,  where  young  men  might  be 
trained  for  the  responsible  duties  they  are  called 
to  discharge  in  preparing  for  the  public  the 
great  journals  that  so  powerfully  affect  public 
opinion.  The  suggestion  met  with  little  favor. 
In   some  places  it  was   ridiculed.     But  now,  in 


114  A  FREE  LANCE 

191£,  twenty-nine  years  after  the  delivery  of 
that  discourse,  the  cornerstone  of  the  Columbia 
University  School  of  Journalism  building,  on 
Broadway  and  116th  Street,  in  the  City  of  New 
York,  has  just  been  laid.  A  magnificent  gift  of 
two  million  dollars  from  Mr.  Pulitzer  rendered 
the  school  possible. 

In  the  copper  box  inside  the  cornerstone  were 
deposited  among  other  things  an  article  on  the 
School  of  Journalism  in  Columbia  University, 
a  report  of  the  University  Council  on  the  or- 
ganization and  academic  relations  of  the  School 
of  Journalism ;  agreements  between  Mr.  Pulitzer 
and  the  heads  of  the  University  concerning  the 
school;  extracts  from  Mr.  Pulitzer's  will  con- 
cerning the  endowment ;  the  curriculum  of  the 
school;  Columbia's  latest  catalogue;  an  article 
by  Dr.  Williams,  printed  in  the  Columbia  Uni- 
versity Quarterly  and  copies  of  the  World,  the 
Times,  the  Brooklyn  Eagle  and  the  Sun.  Ed- 
itors of  these  papers  are  members  of  the  advi- 
sory board  of  the  school. 

I  cannot  but  think  a  copy  of  the  sermon  re- 
ferred to,  in  which  the  new  School  of  Journalism 
just  established  in  connection  with  Columbia 
University  was  forecast  and  recommended,  might 
have    properly    graced   the    copper    box    in    the 


A  COLLEGE  OF  JOURNALISM     115 

cornerstone;  for,  so  far  as  I  know,  it  contains 
the  first  suggestion  of  any  such  school.  Jour- 
nalism is  a  branch  of  literature,  and  as  such  it 
should  be  taught  either  in  a  school  by  itself,  or 
as  a  part  of  the  voluntary  or  post-graduate 
curriculum  of  some  established  college.  Thack- 
eray had  an  exalted  opinion  of  journalism,  and 
among  his  friends  were  many  editors  of  not  only 
national,  but  world-wide  reputation.  He  never, 
so  far  as  I  know,  thought  of  a  school  of  journal- 
ism, but  many  are  the  good  things  he  said  of  the 
influential  papers  of  his  country  and  of  his  day. 
My  readers  will  no  doubt  recall  these  words 
from  "Pendennis :" — 

"They  were  passing  through  the  Strand  as  they 
talked,  and  by  a  newspaper  office,  which  was  all 
lighted  up  and  bright.  Reporters  were  coming  out 
of  the  place,  or  rushing  up  to  it  in  cabs;  there  were 
lamps  burning  in  the  editors'  rooms,  and  above, 
where  the  compositors  were  at  work,  the  windows 
of  the  building  were  in  a  blaze  of  gas.  'Look  at 
that,  Pen/  Warrington  said.  'There  she  is — the 
great  engine — she  never  sleeps.  She  has  her  am- 
bassadors in  every  quarter  of  the  world,  her  cour- 
iers upon  every  road.  Her  officers  march  along  with 
armies,  and  her  envoys  walk  into  statesmen's  cab- 
inets.    They   are   ubiquitous.     Yonder   journal   has 


116  A  FREE  LANCE 

an  agent  at  this  minute  giving  bribes  at  Madrid, 
and  another  inspecting  the  price  of  potatoes  in  Co- 
vent  Garden.  Look!  here  comes  the  Foreign  Ex- 
press galloping  in.  They  will  be  able  to  give  the 
news  to  Downing  Street  to-morrow;  funds  will  rise 

or    fall,    fortunes    be   made   or   lost.     Lord    B 

will  get  up,  and  holding  the  paper  in  his  hand, 
and  seeing  the  noble  marquis  in  his  place,  will  make 
a  great  speech;  and — and  Mr.  Doolan  will  be  called 
away  from  his  supper  at  the  Back  Kitchen,  for  he 
is  foreign  sub-editor,  and  sees  the  mail  on  the  news- 
paper sheet  before  he  goes  to  his  own.'  And  so 
talking,  the  friends  turned  into  their  chambers,  as 
the  dawn  was  beginning  to  peep." 

Schopenhauer's  idea  of  the  newspaper  and  of 
journalism  was  by  no  means  so  high,  but  he  also 
regarded  the  public  paper,  whether  daily  or 
weekly,  as  the  mirror  of  the  times.  It  was  not 
simply  a  record  of  events,  but  it  was  as  well  an 
enlargement  and  display  of  them.     He  wrote: — 

"Exaggeration  of  every  kind  is  as  essential  to 
journalism  as  it  is  to  the  dramatic  art;  for  the 
object  of  journalism  is  to  make  events  go  as  far 
as  possible*  Thus  it  is  that  all  journalists  are, 
in  the  very  nature  of  their  calling,  alarmists;  and 
this  is  their  way  of  giving  interest  to  what  they 
write.     Herein   they   are   like   little   dogs;   if   any- 


PHARMACY  117 

thing  stirs  them,  they  immediately  set  up  a  shrill 
bark. 

"Therefore,  let  us  carefully  regulate  the  atten- 
tion to  be  paid  to  this  triumph  of  danger,  so  that 
it  may  not  disturb  our  digestion.  Let  us  recognize 
that  a  newspaper  is  at  best  but  a  magnifying  glass, 
and  very  often  merely  a  shadow  on  the  wall." 

Whitelaw  Reid  wrote:  "The  day  is  coming 
when  the  position  of  a  first-class  editor  will  be 
more  influential  in  the  United  States  than  that 
of  a  member  of  the  Cabinet  at  Washington." 
It  is  essential  that  so  great  an  influence  should 
be  as  well  a  worthy  one.  We  may  follow  Scho- 
penhauer's advice,  and  so  regulate  the  attention 
we  give  the  journal  that  there  shall  be  no  dis- 
turbance of  our  digestion;  but  the  great  world 
will  read,  every  year,  still  more  eagerly  the  daily 
paper,  and  will  be  changed  by  the  reading.  All 
the  more,  then,  do  we  need  the  College  of  Jour- 
nalism. 

PHARMACY 

WAS  present  at  the  Commencement  of  the 
■*■  College  of  Pharmacy.  The  young  men  had 
made  themselves  proficient  in  pharmacy,  chemis- 
try, and  materia  medica,  with  other  branches  of 
learning   thought   to   be    essential   to   the   com- 


118  A  FREE  LANCE 

pounding  of  drugs.  They  received  their  diplo- 
mas, signed  by  grave  and  accomplished  profess- 
ors. The  clergyman  who  had  been  invited  to 
open  the  exercises  with  prayer  asked  the  Divine 
blessing  and  guidance  for  the  young  pharma- 
cists who  were  "leaving  the  halls  of  learning  to 
engage  in  professional  life."  The  orchestra 
discoursed  sweet  music.  The  orator  indulged 
in  flights  of  eloquence,  and  urged  the  youths  to 
set  before  themselves  high  ideals.  It  was  a 
grand  affair.  But  one  could  not  but  smile  in- 
wardly at  the  thought  that  in  a  few  days  or,  at 
most,  a  fortnight,  the  larger  number  of  the 
young  men  would  be  in  charge  of  soda-water 
fountains,  or  dipping  out  ice-cream  to  eager 
youngsters.  It  was  for  that  sort  of  thing,  ap- 
parently, they  had  received  instruction  in  such 
learned  branches  as  have  been  named,  and  had 
obtained  diplomas. 

Perhaps  the  clergyman  would  hardly  have 
mentioned  in  prayer  the  distinguished  services 
these  young  men  were  to  render  a  much-to-be- 
congratulated  community,  had  he  stopped  to  con- 
template the  fact  that  nine  out  of  ten  of  those 
fountains  of  summer  drink  would  do  their  larg- 
est business  on  Sunday  while  he  was  preaching 
the  gospel  in  a  neighboring  church.     The  mod- 


PHARMACY  119 

era  drug  shop  is  only  a  soda-water  fountain 
with  a  small  drug  attachment.  That  being  the 
case,  there  should  be  in  the  College  of  Pharmacy 
a  learned  chair  of  Soda-water  Fountains ;  and, 
it  may  be,  an  associate  professorship  of  Ice- 
cream. 

There  is  now  a  rage  for  colleges  and  profes- 
sions. Doubtless,  before  long  there  will  be  a 
College  of  Domestic  Service,  with  a  President 
and  Faculty  of  Kitchen  Girls,  having,  among 
other  chairs,  one  of  dish-towels.  There  are 
learned  professions,  and  there  are  honorable  oc- 
cupations that  are  not  learned;  law,  medicine, 
and  theology  belong  to  the  former,  and  the  at- 
tending of  counters  in  shops,  of  whatever  kind, 
belongs  to  the  latter.  No  doubt  the  apothecary 
should  understand  the  putting  up  of  prescrip- 
tions, and  he  should  undergo  an  examination, 
and  be  licensed ;  but  why  call  his  business  a 
learned  profession?  It  is  nothing  of  the  kind. 
Still  further,  what  little  dignity  the  pharmacy 
once  had  it  has  itself  destroyed.  It  is  now  a 
sort  of  conglomerate  establishment,  where  you 
can  buy  medicine  or  chewing-gum,  an  adhesive 
plaster  or  a  kite  and  a  bag  of  marbles,  as  you 
please.  Why  not  have  fewer  drug  shops,  and 
have  them   real   drug   shops,  where   good   medi- 


120  A  FREE  LANCE 

cines  can  be  had,  and  where  a  prescription  can 
be  put  up  without  danger  to  the  patient? 

HYMNS  BETTER  THAN  CREEDS 

T   MUCH  prefer  the  things  men  say  of  God  in 

•■■  their  hymns  to  the  picture  of  Him  found  in 
the  various  treatises  of  theology,  creeds,  and 
sermons. 

VICTOR  HUGO 


T  7ICTOR  HUGO  added  no  thought  to  our  in- 
*  tellectual  treasure,  but  our  old  and  com- 
mon-place literary  material  he  rendered  mar- 
velously  attractive  by  the  pomp  of  his  rhetoric. 
He  is  not  a  world-poet;  no  one  would  think  of 
him  as  in  the  same  class  with  Shakespeare;  and 
yet  he  is  a  writer  of  no  common  sort.  The 
serene  creative  light  of  Goethe's  genius  he  had 
not,  but  he  had  action  beyond  anything  to  be 
found  in  the  work  of  the  German  poet.  His 
genius  was  that  of  revolution,  revolt,  insurrec- 
tion, protest.  He  found  the  air  in  his  day  sur- 
charged with  the  spirit  of  unrest,  and  he  gave 
that  spirit  new  expression. 


THE  PRESENT  121 


II 


As  an  artist  in  words  Hugo  was  what  Dore 
was  as  an  artist  in  lines  and  colors.  Both 
painted  with  a  large  brush,  and  neither  of  the 
two  men  knew  the  meaning  of  simplicity.  But 
in  Hugo  there  was  always  the  marvelous  touch 
of  the  master.  Music  and  color  were  every- 
where. 

THE  PRESENT 

T  TOW  easily  we  remember  the  past!  how 
•*■  ■■■  eagerly  we  anticipate  the  future!  but  how 
little  we  improve  the  present !  We  may  recall  the 
long  ago  remorsefully,  we  may  dread  the  years 
to  come,  but  we  too  easily  forget  that  all  our 
hope  springs  from  the  use  we  make  of  the  pres- 
ent. Past  and  future  are  no  longer  ours,  nor 
have  they  any  existence;  the  present  alone  re- 
mains, and  it  is  ours. 

THE  AGNOSTIC 

A  SORROWFUL  agnostic  I  can  well  under- 
stand, but  a  joyous  one  astonishes  me. 
A  man  may  regretfully  acknowledge  his  igno- 
rance, but  what   shall  be  said  of  him  when  he 


122  A  FREE  LANCE 

tosses  his  cap  in  the  air  and  boasts  of  that  igno- 
rance before  all  the  world?  One  may  not  be  re- 
sponsible for  want  of  knowledge,  but  why  should 
he  rejoice  in  that  want?  That  all  men  are 
equally  ignorant  upon  the  subject  under  dis- 
cussion does  not  help  matters;  on  the  contrary, 
it  should  deepen  sorrow,  for  it  renders  the  want 
of  knowledge  more  hopeless.  Yet  I  find  boast- 
ful agnostics  who  think  confessed  ignorance  a 
thing  to  be  proud  of.  The  man  who  is  wanting 
in  information  with  regard  to  some  question  in 
mechanics  is  rarely  known  to  rejoice  in  his  ig- 
norance; but  when  he  comes  to  consider  the 
vastly  more  important  question  of  religion,  he  is 
boastful  of  his  want  of  knowledge.  His  changed 
attitude  with  regard  to  the  question  of  religion 
can  be  explained  in  only  one  way:  his  want  of 
knowledge  gives  him  pleasure,  and  he  does  not 
desire  instruction.  He  loves  darkness  rather 
than  light. 

MODERN  POETRY  ARTIFICIAL 

WHY  is  it  in  this  age  poets  can  get  no 
hearing?  Why  is  it  no  publisher  will 
touch  a  book  of  verse?  The  world  loves  good 
poetry,  and  always  will  love  it.  Why  is  it,  then, 
that  poetry  is  a  drug  in  the  market?     I  think 


SONGLESS  VERSE  NOT  POETRY     123 

the  reason  is  that  our  poets  no  longer  write  for 
the  people,  but  everywhere  address  those  only  who 
have  artistic  and  artificial  tastes.  The  poetry 
of  this  age  is  excellent,  but  it  appeals  only  to 
the  few.  Could  Burns  return  to  earth,  our  age 
would  welcome  his  verses  with  great  joy  of  heart. 
Not  much  was  said  a  hundred  years  ago  about 
the  technique  of  verse,  and  few  cared  for  those 
fine  conceits  that  so  please  verse-makers  of  the 
present  time.  The  taste  for  much  of  our  mod- 
ern poetry  is  like  that  for  olives — wholly  ac- 
quired. 

SONGLESS  VERSE  IS  NOT  POETRY 

WEARY  of  hearing  this  perpetual  discourse 
x  concerning  the  moral  purpose  of  poetic  art. 
The  end  and  aim  of  all  good  verse  is  song.  The 
composition  need  not  be  distinctively  lyric,  and 
yet  songless  verse,  be  it  never  so  correct  in  meas- 
ure and  pleasing  in  structure,  is  not  poetry. 

WE  ARE  RULED  BY  THE  DEAD 

QTAND  of  a  Sunday  morning  in  any  cathe- 
*^  dral,  and  you  may  hear  the  dead  sing  and 
preach ;  you  may  hear  them  avow  their  faith. 
The  wax-tapers  that  burn  upon  the  altar  were 


124  A  FREE  LANCE 

lighted  centuries  ago  by  priests  and  acolytes 
who  put  aside  their  white  surplices  and  fell 
asleep  when  the  great  city  was  young.  Unseen 
hands  swing  the  glittering  censer,  and  they  will 
still  swing  it,  filling  the  air  with  clouds  of  in- 
cense, when  other  centuries  have  gone  by.  How 
very  old  is  the  service !  It  will  continue,  it  may 
be,  so  long  as  man  continues  to  dwell  upon  the 
earth,  and  in  it  the  living  and  the  dead  are  one. 
We  are  ruled  by  the  dead.  From  their  urns 
they  lay  hold  of  us,  and  whither  they  will  they 
turn  us. 

POPULAR  GOVERNMENT 

GOVERNMENT  of  the  people,  by  the  peo- 
ple, and  for  the  people"  is  likely  to  be  a 
very  good  government  or  a  very  bad  one,  but  it 
is  seldom  anything  between. 

THE  SUCCESSFUL  POLITICIAN 

T  HEARD  a  successful  politician  say:  "My 
■*■  fellow  citizens  have  forced  upon  me  honors 
and  offices  from  which  I  shrink,  and  from  which 
I  would  gladly  escape.  My  friends  all  know 
how  domestic  and  retiring  I  am  in  my  tastes, 


EVANGELICAL  BOOKS  DULL      125 

and  it  is  difficult  to  see  why  they  have  insisted 
upon  forcing  me  into  public  life,  for  which  na- 
ture has  so  poorly  qualified  me.  I  have  ever 
cherished  the  hope  that  it  might  be  my  lot  to 
serve  my  country  in  some  humble  station,  far  re- 
moved from  noise  and  excitement ;  and  I  have  de- 
sired no  other  reward  than  that  of  seeing  my 
fellow  citizens  prosperous  and  happy.  I  reluc- 
tantly accept  an  office  which  I  feel  in  my  heart 
should  have  fallen  to  a  worthier  man." 

There  is  a  surprising  beauty  that  our  English 
language  is  powerless  to  describe,  in  the  more- 
than-Christian  humility  and  unselfish  patriotism 
of  the  average  politician.  Where  in  all  the 
world  can  we  match  the  modest  and  retiring  dis- 
position and  the  irreproachable  integrity  of  a 
New  York  alderman? 

EVANGELICAL  BOOKS  DULL 

PROFESSOR  SIHLER  calls  Lessing's  "Na- 
than the  Wise"  the  Canticum  Canticorum 
of  Deism.  Well  said !  Why  is  it  that  the  books 
we  call  "evangelical"  are  so  often  dull?  I  sup- 
pose it  is  because  they  lack  human  sympathy. 
They  shut  their  readers  in  on  every  side  with 
wr  ought-iron    traditions.     Nothing    so    offends 


126  A  FREE  LANCE 

their  authors  as  an  inclination  on  the  part  of 
their  readers  to  form  an  independent  opinion. 
If  you  love  liberty,  whether  of  mind  or  person, 
always  allow  the  "Right  Reverend  Fathers  in 
God"  to  go  by  on  the  other  side. 

THE  SENSUOUS  WORLD  IS  SYMBOLIC 

THE  sensuous  world  is  purely  symbolic.  It 
is  a  vast  show  in  which  men  provide  their 
own  entertainment,  actor  and  spectator  being 
one  and  the  same  person. 

WHERE  TO  LOOK 

SIDNEY  wrote,  "Look  in  thy  heart,  and 
write."  I  should  think  a  glance  at  one's 
own  heart  would  render  writing  difficult.  Why 
not  look  at  the  needs  of  others,  so  far  as  they 
may  be  discovered,  and  write  with  them  in 
view  ? 


GLADSTONE 

GLADSTONE  was  certainly  a  "great  and 
good  man,"  but  I  do  not  see  why  he  should 
go  down  in  history  as  the  champion  of  the  rights 
of  the  common  man,   and  as  the   friend  of  the 


TOO  YOUNG  FOR  HISTORY       W 

oppressed.     He  generally  managed  to  be  on  the 
wrong   side    of   whatever   great   moral   question 
was  before  the  English  public.     He  was  on  the 
wrong  side  of  the  English  Church  question,  of 
the   Irish   question,   and  of  the   American   Civil 
War  question.     He  said  during  the  Civil  War 
that  he  "expected  the  liberation  of  the  slaves  by 
their  own  masters   sooner  than  by  the  North." 
He  said,  "Jefferson  Davis  and  the  leaders  of  the 
South  have  made  an  army ;  they  are  soon,  I  un- 
derstand, to  have  a  navy ;  but,  greater  than  all 
this,    they    have    made    a    nation."     Well,    Mr. 
Davis  did  not  make  a  nation,  but  somebody  in 
England  made   a   fool  of  himself.     In  nothing 
was  the  real  greatness  of  Gladstone  more  mani- 
fest than  in  the  ability  he  exhibited  of  retaining 
his  influence  and  power  in  the  face  of  so  many 
colossal  mistakes. 

THE   UNITED   STATES   TOO  YOUNG  FOR 
HISTORY 

THE  United  States  is  yet  too  young  a  coun- 
try for  anything  like  an  exhaustive  his- 
tory. Time  is  an  important  element  in  the 
preparation  of  trustworthy  records,  annals,  and 
chronicles.  One  must  view  the  events  of  which 
one   writes    from   a   sufficient   distance,   but   the 


128  A  FREE  LANCE 

distance  should  not  be  so  great  that  it  obscures 
those  events  and  renders  them  indistinct.  Pub- 
lishers announce  from  time  to  time  a  history  of 
the  Civil  War,  and  reviewers  recommend  the 
book.  Believe  them  not.  When  another  cen- 
tury shall  have  passed  away  it  may  be  possible 
to  write  the  history  of  what  we  sometimes  call 
the  Great  Rebellion. 


LONGFELLOW 

ONGFELLOW  may  not  be  so  original  as 
■*—*  are  some  of  the  poets  for  whom  we  care 
less,  and  he  may  be  open  to  some  of  the  criticism 
with  which  Poe  and  others  assailed  him,  but  he 
is  now,  and  will  long  remain,  the  most  dearly  be- 
loved and  most  frequently  quoted  of  all  our 
American  poets. 

A  BRAZEN  JACKASS 

fin  HE  children  of  Israel  worshiped  in  the  wil- 
*■■  derness,  so  it  is  recorded,  a  Golden  Calf. 
Had  they  been  living  not  very  long  ago  in  Chi- 
cago and  been  attending  in  that  city  a  certain 
political  convention,  they  might  have  given  a 
pleasing   variety    to    their   worship    by    falling 


SIMPLER  RELATIONS  129 

down  before  a  Brazen  Jackass.     There  is  such 
a  thing  as  taste  even  in  religion. 

SIMPLER  RELATIONS 

NO  two  men,"  said  Emerson,  "but  being  left 
alone  with  each  other  enter  into  simpler 
relations."  That  depends  upon  what  you  call 
"simpler  relations."  I  know  of  two  men  who, 
so  soon  as  they  were  left  alone  with  each  other, 
came  to  blows. 

SUPPRESSION  OF  KNOWLEDGE 

THE  suppression  of  knowledge  on  the  ground 
of  expediency  is  like  the  quenching  of  the 
sun.  The  Man  of  Galilee  said,  "I  am  the  Light 
of  the  world."  That  in  some  measure  should 
every  man  be.  What  new  truth  I  possess  must 
be  imparted.  The  good  man  is  a  socialist  when 
he  comes  to  the  field  of  ethics. 


TRUTH 


A 


I 

LL   private    ownership   in   truth   is    moral 
robbery. 


130  A  FREE  LANCE 

II 

I  must  not  only  impart  what  truth  I  possess, 
but  I  must  also  welcome  new  truth  from  what- 
ever source.  To  reject  any  truth  because  it 
seems  to  contradict  a  preconceived  opinion,  is 
to  quench  the  light ;  and  of  all  sins  those  against 
light  are  the  most  deadly.  I  must  tell  the  truth 
and  shock  the  world. 

THE  MOB 

rTIHE  man  who  would  argue  with  a  mob  may 
*■  count  upon  defeat  before  he  begins  his  argu- 
ment. Napoleon  knew  how  useless  it  was  to 
argue  with  such  mobs  as  inaugurated  in  France 
the  "Terror"  of  '93,  and  his  instant  appeal  was 
to  arms.  The  red  night-fires  of  his  soldiers  tore 
even  the  robe  of  darkness  from  the  bloodthirsty 
wretches  hiding  in  every  place  of  concealment. 
He  argued  only  with  the  blazing  lips  of  cannon, 
and  with  the  remorseless  tread  of  trained  and 
disciplined  troops. 

JOHN  HANCOCK 

JOHN  HANCOCK  may  have  been  a  patriot, 
but   if   Harvard  University    (then   College) 
had  been  compelled  to  take  up  with  more  men  of 


JOHN  HANCOCK  131 

Hancock's  moral  equipment  there  would  not  be 
much  of  a  university  in  Cambridge  to-day.  Some- 
thing like  fifteen  thousand  and  four  hundred 
pounds  of  College  funds  was  paid  over  to  him 
(a  large  sum  for  those  days),  and  that  was  the 
last  Harvard  saw  of  the  sum  until,  after  his 
death,  his  heirs,  who  had  a  cleaner  account  with 
conscience,  made  honorable  restitution.  For  a 
quarter  of  a  century  the  College  begged  and 
threatened,  but  not  one  cent  could  it  recover 
during  the  distinguished  patriot's  stay  on  earth. 
It  is  not  a  pleasant  transaction  to  contemplate, 
but  history  is  history,  and  the  truth  should  be 
t0ld — so  Quincy  thought  when  he  published  his 
"History   of  Harvard  University." 

The  men  who  signed  the  Declaration  of  In- 
dependence were,  many  of  them,  men  of  uncom- 
promising uprightness,  and  they  were,  as  well, 
men  of  great  courage ;  but  human  nature  was  no 
more  angelic  then  than  it  is  now.  The  average 
man,  of  whatever  circle  in  society,  will  average 
about  the  same  in  one  age  as  in  another.  One 
sample  of  honesty  will  come  up  to  the  standard 
of  other  samples  if  circumstances  and  knowledge 
be  taken  into  account ;  and  the  only  reason  there 
is  no  recognized  common  standard  is  that  it  is 
impossible  to  say  just  what  any  single  specimen 


132  A  FREE  LANCE 

is  worth.  It  may  be  that  our  revolutionary 
fathers  were  far  above  the  average  in  honesty, 
but  they  certainly  could  not,  all  of  them,  have 
believed  the  Declaration  of  Independence,  which 
they  nevertheless  signed;  that  is  to  say,  they 
could  not  have  believed  it  in  anything  but  a 
Pickwickian  sense.  When  they  signed  the  docu- 
ment, with  its  statement  that  "all  men  are  born 
free  and  equal,"  they  knew  very  well  that 
slavery  was  a  part  of  their  system.  They  knew 
also  that  the  "inalienable"  rights  named  in  the 
Declaration  were  not  inalienable.  And  they 
knew  many  other  things  which  the  children  who 
came  after  them  never  gave  them  credit  for 
knowing.  It  is  astonishing  how  Glory  takes  to 
the  woods  when  History  turns  upon  her  the 
blaze  of  her  searchlight.  If  we  would  fare 
better  with  our  children  and  stand  well  with  our 
consciences,  it  is  incumbent  upon  us  to  do  better 
while  we  have   the   opportunity. 


RELIGIOUS  INSTRUCTION  IN  PUBLIC 
SCHOOLS 

HOUGHTFUL   minds,   troubled   about   the 
condition  of  their  country,  turn  with  hope 
to  Popular  Education.     The  value  of  such  an 


T 


SOCIALISM  133 

education  cannot  be  overestimated,  but  it  must 
be  of  the  right  kind.  And  it  must  be  fortified 
by  a  substantial  ethical  safeguard  of  some  sort. 
There  are  those  who  believe  that  we  sacrifice  our 
safeguard  when  we  forbid  the  imparting  of  re- 
ligious instruction  in  public  schools ;  and  yet 
the  very  persons  who  thus  believe  are  unable 
to  show  us  how  we  may  furnish  such  instruction 
where  there  is  no  state  church,  and  at  the  same 
time  avoid  sectarian  aggression.  The  moment 
we  provide  religious  instruction,  we  throw  our- 
selves open  to  all  manner  of  proselyting ;  and  yet 
even  a  state  church,  which  is  the  natural  and 
final  result  of  proselyting,  is  better  than  ex- 
tinction. 

SOCIALISM 


fTlHE  Socialist  tells  us  it  is  the  duty  of  the 
■*■  State  to  provide  for  the  individual,  but  he 
does  not  stop  to  reflect  upon  the  fact  that  the 
State  that  is  to  provide  and  the  individuals  that 
are  to  be  provided  for  are  one  and  the  same 
thing.  If  the  State  provides  for  the  individual, 
it  can  do  so  only  because  individuals  have  first 
provided  for  the  State.     You  can  draw  from  a 


134  A  FREE  LANCE 

bank  only  so  much  money  as  you  have  deposited 
in  that  bank.  There  is  no  State  apart  from  the 
individuals  that  compose  it ;  and  what  those  in- 
dividuals are,  that  the  State  must  become.  If 
Socialists  want  the  State  to  care  for  them,  then 
they  must  care  for  the  State.  They  will  get  out 
of  it  only  what  they  put  into  it.  I  fail  of 
seeing  what  they  gain  when  they  receive  only 
what  they  have  given.  Well,  suppose  the  State 
becomes  the  dispenser  of  all  there  is  to  dis- 
pense, and  that  it  guarantees  to  every  man  a 
living:  how  much  will  the  State  be  able  to  dis- 
pense unless  men  guarantee  to  it  honest  and 
continuous  work?  Might  they  not  just  as  well 
toil  for  themselves  as  for  the  State?  Is  not 
work  for  the  one  work  for  the  other? 

II 

One  would  think  there  were  enough  loafers  in 
our  cities  and  villages  without  making  an  effort 
to  increase  the  number  of  idle  and  worthless  men 
and  women.  But  Socialism  proposes  to  pauper- 
ize the  entire  nation  by  guaranteeing  to  every 
individual  a  good  living.  Civilization  is,  like 
every  other  good  thing,  founded  upon  honest 
toil.  No  man  ever  had  an  inherent  right  to  a 
living.     It  is  the  law  of  Nature  that  if  a  man 


SOCIALISM  135 

will  not  work  he  must  starve.  Whatever  guar- 
antees to  him  a  living  without  toil  lifts  him  at 
once  above  the  requirements  of  that  law.  So- 
cialism would  give  to  every  man  such  guaranty, 
destroying  at  a  stroke  all  incentive  to  an  in- 
dustrious and  useful  life.  The  system  has  been 
rightly  described  as  "the  lazy  man's  Utopia." 
It  is  the  delightful  dream  of  seedy  individuals 
who,  having  beer  incomes,  are  "tormented  by 
champagne  tastes." 

A  writer  in  a  New  York  paper  some  time  ago 
called  Socialism  "the  dream  of  vengeance  of  the 
weak  man  against  the  strong."  Therein  lies  its 
most  ugly  characteristic.  With  its  impractica- 
bility it  mixes  the  most  deadly  hatred.  It  takes 
for  granted  that  the  prosperous  man  is  a  de- 
spoiler  of  his  race ;  one  of  its  most  popular  texts 
is  nothing  less  than  an  assault  upon  all  private 
property.  Holding  that  private  property  is 
robbery,  it  yet  stretches  out  its  hands,  and  is 
clamorous  for  a  division  of  that  robbery.  Even 
savages  have  property,  and  I  think  but  few  of 
the  children  of  the  forest  would  relish  a  proposal 
to  have  the  bows  and  arrows  of  the  prosperous 
divided  so  that  the  lazy  and  worthless  should 
have  an  equal  share. 

One  of  the  worst  features  of  Socialism  is,  as 


136  A  FREE  LANCE 

has  been  said,  the  bitter  hatred  it  engenders.  It 
tells  the  poor  man  that  the  property  of  every 
wealthy  man  belongs  in  part  to  him.  It  calls 
every  rich  man  a  robber.  Of  course  nothing  of 
the  kind  is  true.  There  are  honest  rich  men, 
and  there  are  as  well  some  dishonest  poor  men. 
Yet  this  evil  system  goes  on  embittering  man 
against  man,  and  leading  to  crime  after  crime. 

Ill 

No  system  of  government  can  ever  change 
human  nature.  Men  would  be  just  as  selfish 
under  Socialism  as  they  now  are  under  a  Re- 
public. No  brotherhood  of  love  can  be  evolved 
from  the  hard  scramble  for  place  and  possessions 
by  relieving  men  of  the  common  burdens  of  life ; 
in  fact,  such  foolish  relief  must  only  increase  the 
selfishness  of  man's  heart.  It  is  the  claim  of 
Socialists  that  the  inequalities  of  life  are  in  large 
measure  due  to  human  selfishness ;  but  selfishness 
goes  much  deeper  than  government,  and  deeper 
than  the  mere  accident  of  birth  and  circum- 
stance; it  is,  unfortunately,  an  element  inherent 
in  human  nature.  It  will  appear  in  every  state 
and  under  all  circumstances,  so  long  as  it  exists 
in  our  nature.  Among  the  most  selfish  of  all 
men  will  be  found  those  who  have  been  relieved 


SOCIALISM  137 

of  anxiety,  and  who  are  provided  with  wealth 
and  ease.  Socialism  would  make  the  world  all 
the  more  selfish  by  guaranteeing  to  every  one 
the  very  things  that  make  people  selfish.  More- 
over, it  would  create  a  vast  stagnation  by  ren- 
dering us  all  equally  well  off.  Equality  in  pos- 
sessions could  not  but  remove  every  incentive  to 
work.  We  labor  to  obtain  more  than  we  have; 
but  we  would  not  labor  had  we  all  we  want. 
Were  all  equally  well  off,  there  could  be  no  such 
thing  as  service,  for  all  men  would  be  masters. 
Think  of  a  millionaire  banker  riding  behind  his 
millionaire  coachman! 

IV 

This  is,  so  far  as  I  know  and  so  far  as  I  have 
been  able  to  discover,  the  true  Socialistic  pro- 
gramme. Not  all  of  these  items  would  be 
acknowledged  by  every  Socialist,  and,  perhaps, 
no  one  would  wholly  approve  the  entire  pro- 
gramme, but  for  "substance  of  doctrine"  this 
representation  is  in  every  way  just  and  fair. 
Of  course  the  arrangement  chosen  is  not  pre- 
cisely such  as  a  trained  Socialist  might  be  ex- 
pected to  adopt,  but  the  items  here  catalogued 
are  either  held  in  the  form  given,  or  as  logical 
and  fair  deductions  from  the  system  itself. 


138  A  FREE  LANCE 

1.  Abolition  of  all  private  property. 

2.  Abolition  of  the  wage-system. 

3.  Abolition  of  the  competitive  system. 

4.  Abolition  of  all  private  banking  and  in- 
surance business. 

5.  Government  ownership  of  all  land,  machin- 
ery, railroads,  telegraph  lines,  and  canals. 

7.  The  organization  of  national  and  interna- 
tional trades  and  labor  unions  on  a  socialistic 
basis. 

8.  Cooperative  production,  with  a  just  distri- 
bution of  its  rewards. 

9.  All  wages  to  be  paid  at  intervals  of  time 
not  exceeding  one  week. 

10.  All  conspiracy  laws  operating  against  the 
right  of  working-men  to  strike,  or  to  induce 
others  to  strike,  shall  be  repealed. 

11.  Gratuitous  administration  of  justice  in  all 
courts  of  law. 

12.  A  graded  income  tax. 

13.  All  banking  and  insurance  to  be  con- 
ducted by  the  general  government. 

14.  All  public  officers  to  be  subject  to  prompt 

recall. 

TWO  REPUBLICS 

I   HAVE  been  greatly  impressed  by  the  close 
resemblance  between  the  old  Roman  Repub- 


TWO  REPUBLICS  139 

lie  at  the  time  when  it  was  about  to  become  an 
empire,  and  our  own  modern  Republic,  the 
United  States  of  America,  now  that  it  appears 
to  be  verging  upon  dissolution.  The  decadent 
features  seem  very  much  the  same  in  both,  as  any 
student  may  see  if  he  will  be  at  the  pains  to  com- 
pare the  two  governments  in  the  light  of  history 
and  in  that  of  present  conditions  in  our  own 
country.  The  tabulation  given  below  brings  out, 
I  think,  this  sad  but  interesting  resemblance  be- 
tween the  two  great  republics  of  history.  It 
may  not  be  too  late  to  profit  by  the  lesson  of 
the  past.  If  it  be  not  too  late,  then  the  writer 
who  brings  before  his  readers  the  peril  both  he 
and  they  would  gladly  escape  may  not  write 
wholly  in  vain. 

ROMAN    REPUBLIC  AMERICAN     REPUBLIC 

1.  Decrease     in     Patri-         1.  Decrease     in     Patri- 

otism, with  growing  otism,  with  growing 

idealization    of    the  idealization    of    the 

Roman   standards.  flag      and      historic 

places    and    associa- 
tions. 

2.  Popular     inclination         2.  Rise  and  great  influ- 
in   the    direction    of  ence  of  demagogues, 
demagogues  and  agi-               self-seekers,      polit- 
tators.  ical   schemers;   pop- 
ular     approval      of 
men      like      Bryan, 


140 


A  FREE  LANCE 


S.  Immense       fortunes. 


4.  Great  speculation  in 

real   estate. 

5.  Cornering    of    food- 

stuffs. 

6.  General  corruption 
in  politics. 

7-  Demoralization  of 
the  family;  divorce; 
few  children  among 
the  rich. 

8.  The  homes  of  the 
wealthy  full  of 
treasures  of  art  and 
of  bric-a-brac. 


9.  Great      extravagance 

of  women;  luxurious 
living;  contempt  for 
manual  labor  and 
all  kinds  of  domes- 
tic service. 

10.  Unwillingness  o  f 
the  poor  to  work; 
vagabondage ;  in  the 
city  of  Rome  a  large 
percentage  of  men 
without  fixed  habita- 
tion. 


Roosevelt  and  Till- 
man. 

3.  Enormous      fortunes, 

trusts,  and  colossal 
monetary  schemes 
and  combinations. 

4.  Great  speculation  in 

many  directions. 

5.  Cornering      of      the 

necessities   of  life. 

6.  "Graft"  in  both  poli- 
tics and  business. 

7.  Divorce         common; 

few  children  among 
the  rich. 

8.  Palaces      of      lavish 

and  wasteful  ex- 
travagance for  the 
wealthy;  costly  jew- 
els and  luxurious 
living. 

9.  Rise  of  labor  unions 
and  the  passing 
away  of  skilled  labor 
and  domestic  serv- 
ice. 

10.  Disinclination  to 
work  ;  increasing 
number  of  "tramps," 
loafers,  and  men 
without  fixed  habita- 
tion. 


BRITISH  RULE 


141 


11.  General   spread   of        11. 
unbelief;  neglect  of 

the  gods,  the  tem- 
ples, and  religious 
observances. 

12.  Great    literary    ac-        12, 
tivity,      with      little 
seriousness    and   not 
much  originality. 


13.  Alarming     increase         13 
of       insanity       and 
crime. 


General  unsettling 
of  belief ;  growing 
doubt  with  regard  to 
fundamental  doc- 
trines of  Christian- 
ity. 

Great  literary  activ- 
ity, with  little  seri- 
ousness of  thought. 
Not  much  original- 
ity. Countless  nov- 
els. 

Alarming  increase 
of  insanity  and 
crime. 


BRITISH  RULE 


"ORITISH  rule  in  India  is  well-nigh  perfect  of 
*-*  its  kind,  and  its  kind  is  surely  good,  but 
no  rule  was  ever  more  unpopular.  It  is  a  strong 
and  safe  rule,  but  there  is  nothing  about  it 
pleasing  to  the  pride  and  indolence  of  the 
natives.  Its  strength  and  weakness  are  prac- 
tically one  and  the  same  thing.  People  ener- 
vated by  a  tropical  climate  like  nothing  that 
exhibits  energy  and  firmness,  both  of  which 
qualities  are  essential  to  English  rule,  and  es- 
sential also  to  India's  prosperity.  England  is 
the  world's   great  colonizer,  and  every  country 


142  A  FREE  LANCE 

she  takes  under  her  wing  is  made  thereby  better 
and  happier.  It  will  be  a  sore  day  for  our 
world  when  she  relaxes  her  strong  yet  gentle 
hold  on  Ireland.  The  American  Revolution 
taught  her,  at  our  expense,  the  lesson  of  colonial 
government,  and  that  lesson  has  been  remem- 
bered. We  may  be  said  to  have  purchased  for 
the  world  much  of  its  peace  and  happiness,  at 
great  cost  to  ourselves,  when  we  fought  the 
mother-land  and  set  up  for  ourselves,  surren- 
dering so  many  things  that  less  important  peo- 
ples possess  and  enjoy. 

MOST  MEN  HAVE  ORDINARY  ABILITIES 

Ti /COST  of  the  young  men  in  this  and  in  every 
■*>  ■*•  other  country  have  only  ordinary  abilities, 
and  yet  American  boys  will  not  prepare  them- 
selves for  such  ordinary  occupations  as  they  are 
able  to  pursue.  The  "Every-Man-a-Sovereign" 
doctrine  is  rapidly  coming  to  flower  in  the 
"Every-Man-a-Fool"  experience.  Great  husky 
fellows  who  were  created  for  manual  labor,  and 
who  should  be  on  a  farm  or  in  a  shop,  are  study- 
ing painting,  architecture,  and  literature.  Con- 
tempt for  rough  work  is  one  of  the  banes  of 
our  age  and  country.     The  common  mechanical 


MEN  HAVE  ORDINARY  ABILITIES     143 

pursuits  do  not  bring  an  easy  and  swift  fortune, 
and    for    that    reason    they    are    despised    and 
avoided.     It  is  now  very  hard  to  find  a  good 
workman.     There    are    few    skilled    mechanics. 
And  men  are  generally  unwilling  to  till  the  soil 
unless  the  tilling  be  on  a  very  large  scale.     To 
sit   all   day   in   a   broker's   office,   watching   the 
fluctuation  of  railway  stocks  and  betting  on  their 
rise  or  fall;  to  peddle  worthless  mining  stocks; 
or  to  control  corrupt  political  parties  and  meas- 
ures— these  occupations  seem  to  the  young  men 
of  our  country  more  alluring  than  more  useful 
and    honorable    employments.     The    "Get-rich- 
quick"   idea,   coupled  with  the   great  American 
lie,  "All  men  are  born  free  and  equal,"  has  sent 
the  coming  generation  off  on  a  fool's  picnic,  the 
end  whereof  must  be   failure. 

The  entire  drift  of  republican  thought  and 
feeling  is  away  from  work,  and  in  the  direction 
of  individualism  and  self-indulgence.  Every 
man  has  a  vote,  and  every  man  must  be  con- 
sulted with  regard  to  every  question.  The  man 
may  have  no  brains,  but  the  elective  franchise 
has  given  him  a  voice,  and  he  can  make  a  noise 
even  if  he  can  do  nothing  more.  Election  day 
summons  thousands  of  ignorant  men  to  express 
their  worthless  opinions.     Two  such  opinions  go 


144  A  FREE  LANCE 

further  and  count  for  more  than  one  opinion  of 
a  better  sort.  The  majority  rule,  and  the 
trained  and  qualified  take  back  seats.  Ours  is 
the  wisdom  of  numbers.  Not  many  voters  un- 
derstand much  about  the  questions  concerning 
which  they  vote,  yet  the  privilege  of  registering 
one's  ignorance  at  the  polls  is  the  priceless  pre- 
rogative of  an  American  citizen.  Thus  it  comes 
to  pass  that  skilled  labor  goes  to  the  wall,  labor 
unions  with  their  vast  deposit  of  folly  come  to 
the  front,  and  ignorance  and  inexperience  win 
the  day  alike  in  politics  and  industry. 

THE  APPROACHING  PERIOD 

WE  are  now  approaching  a  critical  period  in 
the  history  of  this  great  Republic.  We 
have  left  far  behind  the  beauty,  grace,  and  ster- 
ling integrity  which  marked  the  character  and 
administration  of  Washington  and  the  few  men 
who  were  of  his  mind  and  manners.  We  are  a 
republic  modeled  after  the  thought  and  feeling 
of  Jefferson,  and  not  after  the  opinions  and 
teaching  of  Washington  and  Hamilton.  It  will 
soon  appear  whether  Jefferson's  idea  of  govern- 
ment has  sufficient  strength  to  hold  together  the 
divergent  elements  that  are  contending  with  each 


CONTEMPT  FOR  MANUAL  LABOR    145 

other;  whether  it  will  be  able  to  resist  the  de- 
structive influences  of  political  intrigue,  the  sale 
and   purchase    of  votes,  pension-grabbing,   the 
crime  introduced  by  immigration,  the  murderous 
Black  Hand  and  other  organizations  of  the  kind, 
the  dense  ignorance  of  large  numbers  of  foreign- 
ers, the  selfishness  of  astute  politicians,  the  co- 
lossal greed  of  capitalistic  combinations,  and  the 
general  corruption  which  fills  every  thoughtful 
mind  with  dismay.     The  outlook  is  anything  but 
encouraging.     It  is  as  Henry  George  has  said, 
"The  struggle  that  must  either  revivify  or  con- 
vulse in  ruin  is  near  at  hand,  if  it  be  not  already 
begun." 

CONTEMPT  FOR  MANUAL  LABOR 

CONTEMPT  for  manual  labor  seems  to  be  a 
necessary  result  of  popular  government. 
We  fix  in  this  country  no  limit  to  the  ambition 
of  any  man.  The  most  illiterate  youth  in  the 
most  unimportant  family  in  all  the  length  and 
breadth  of  these  United  States  is  assured  over 
and  over  again  by  politicians  and  stump-orators 
that  if  he  will  but  aspire  to  place  and  power,  he 
may  become  our  chief  executive.  Fillmore  and 
Johnson  were  in  early  life  tailors.     Lincoln  was 


146  A  FREE  LANCE 

a  rail-splitter.  Garfield  was  a  canal-boy. 
Even  Washington  was  in  early  life  a  surveyor. 
Why  should  not  Tom,  Dick,  and  Harry  leave 
lowly  occupations,  to  govern  the  State  of  New 
York,  or  preside  over  the  affairs  of  an  entire 
nation?  Other  men  have  risen,  and  why  should 
not  any  boy  do  what  others  have  done? 

The  possibility  is  as  stated,  but  how  few  con- 
sider the  remoteness  of  the  probability.  And  so 
it  comes  to  pass  that  the  present  labor  is  de- 
spised. Why  should  one  perfect  hand  and  brain 
in  that  which  must  so  soon  be  laid  aside  for  the 
exalted  positions  and  duties  that  under  a  popu- 
lar government  await  Tom,  Dick,  and  Harry? 
It  rarely  occurs  to  the  young  man  to  ask  if  there 
was  not  something  more  than  mere  opportunity 
required  for  the  splendid  achievements  and  his- 
toric importance  of  Washington,  Lincoln,  and 
Grant. 

As  the  housemaid  believes  that  the  only 
difference  between  her  mistress  and  herself  is 
that  of  money  or  of  fine  clothes,  so  the  village 
lubber  holds  that  the  only  difference  between  the 
wisest  and  ablest  man  that  ever  walked  this  earth 
and  himself  is  that  of  opportunity.  He  will  tell 
you  that  the  same  opportunity  must  in  either 
case,  or  in  both  cases,  produce  exactly  the  same 


WORK  IS  HONORABLE  147 

result ;  all  of  which  is  as  untrue  as  would  be  the 
statement  that,  given  the  same  soil,  moisture, 
light,  and  temperature,  all  seeds  must  come  to 
the  same  flower. 

WORK  IS  HONORABLE 

T  X  TORK  is  honorable,  and  bread  and  butter 
»  »  are  quite  as  respectable  as  are  ortolan 
and  choice  wines.  We  are,  most  of  us,  created 
on  the  bread-and-butter  side  of  life,  and  upon 
that  side  we  are  wanted.  To  improve  the  work 
that  belongs  to  us  and  that  awaits  us  is  much 
better  than  to  do  poorly  work  that  does  not  be- 
long to  us.  It  was  the  enemy  of  mankind  who 
whispered  into  the  attentive  but  inexperienced 
ear  of  our  great  progenitor,  "Ye  shall  be  as 
gods ;"  and  it  is  the  same  old  enemy  that  to-day 
whispers  to  the  sons  of  men,  "Leave  off  serving 
in  humble  stations,  and  you  shall  become  the 
arbiters  of  destiny  and  the  rulers  of  the 
world."  Carlyle  said  in  all  his  life  no  wiser 
words  than  these:  "Work  is  man's  true  maj- 
esty." Said  also  the  ancient  Oracle,  "Do  to- 
day thy  nearest  duty," — do  it  with  all  thy 
might,  and  do  it  well. 

In  the  old  days  in  England  service,  like  lord- 


148  A  FREE  LANCE 

ship,  extended  through  many  generations,  and 
perfected  itself  with  the  years.  Men  were  not 
ashamed  of  service.  They  contemplated  with 
noble  pride  the  well-performed  work  of 
grandfather,  and  great-grandfather,  and  it  was 
their  ambition  to  do  their  own  work  as  well. 
The  butler  did  not  trouble  his  head  with  dreams 
of  Parliament.  Now  no  man  will  work  if  he  can 
escape  the  necessity.  Why  should  he  perfect 
himself  in  that  which  he  despises,  and  which  he 
regards  as  nothing  but  a  stepping-stone  to  some- 
thing better?  When  you  take  the  dignity  out 
of  labor,  you  destroy  the  quality  and  value  of 
labor  for  all  the  world. 

ENGLISH  RULE  IN  AMERICA 

THE  rule  of  England  in  America  was  never 
the  hard  and  ugly  thing  our  Fourth-of- 
July  patriots  would  have  us  believe.  Senator 
Hoar  said,  in  a  speech  delivered  at  South  Bos- 
ton, March  18th,  1901:  "The  government  of 
England  was,  in  the  main,  a  gentle  government, 
much  as  our  fathers  complained  of  it.  Her  yoke 
was  easy  and  her  burden  was  light;  our  fathers 
were  a  hundred  times  better  off  in  1775  than  were 
the  men  of  Kent,  the  vanguard  of  liberty  in  Eng- 


ENGLISH  RULE  IN  AMERICA     149 

land.  There  was  more  happiness  in  Middlesex 
on  the  Concord  than  there  was  in  Middlesex  on 
the  Thames." 

The  government  of  England  was  in  early 
times  not  so  mild  as  it  is  to-day,  but  it  was  al- 
ways in  advance  of  the  age;  it  is  in  advance  of 
the  age  in  which  we  live,  and  it  will,  no  doubt, 
remain  the  leader  of  all  ages  in  the  wisdom  and 
mildness  of  its  administration.  Every  govern- 
ment has  its  own  peculiar  worth  to  the  entire 
world,  but  the  mission  of  England  has  always 
been,  notwithstanding  its  many  civil  and  for- 
eign wars,  one  of  peace  and  domestic  happiness. 
It  has  made  the  world  a  safe  place  to  live  in. 
The  English  have  great  respect  for  law.  Noth- 
ing seems  to  them  quite  so  bad  as  anarchy. 
Their  judges  and  courts  have  authority,  and 
their  decisions  are  respected.  Wherever  the 
English  flag  waves,  life,  liberty,  and  property 
are  protected.  It  is  not  so  with  us.  We  can 
scarcely  keep  our  judges  from  becoming  the 
creatures  of  political  factions.  We  have  lost 
much  of  our  reverence  for  law,  and  in  some  parts 
of  our  country  the  citizens  can  hardly  be  called 
law-abiding.  I  have  no  doubt  that  were  we  un- 
der the  government  of  England,  law  and  order 
as  well   as   personal  liberty  would  be  for  us   a 


150  A  FREE  LANCE 

larger  and  richer  possession.  Still,  it  would  be 
at  the  sacrifice  of  that  national  independence 
which  both  England  and  America  hold  dear. 


MINOR  POETS 

[  HAVE  in  my  library  a  number  of  books 
■"■  written  by  poets  little  known  to  the  reading 
world.  Some  of  the  books  contain  verses  of 
great  beauty  and  of  rare  worth.  Why  is  it  that 
their  authors  never  succeeded  in  attracting  the 
attention  they  deserved,  and  which  their  more 
fortunate  confreres  so  easily  secured?  I  use  the 
word  "confreres"  because  the  order  of  poets  is 
always  religious.  There  could  be  no  religion  but 
of  mud-gods  and  dirt-worship,  without  the  over- 
hanging dream-world  of  which  the  poet  is 
prophet  and  interpreter.  We  shall  never  know 
how  great  is  the  world's  indebtedness  to  the  mas- 
ters of  song  who  prevent  men  from  living  by 
bread  alone.  "Where  there  is  no  vision,"  said 
the  sacred  writer,  "the  people  perish."  The 
breath  of  spiritual  life  is  preserved  within  us 
by  the  revelations  of  those  sons  of  light. 

Why  are  so  many  of  them  neglected?  Why 
do  they  fail  of  reasonable  recognition?  The 
cause  is  only  remotely  in  the  poets  themselves, 


MINOR  POETS  151 

while  it  is  in  general,  and  most  clearly  in  the 
unspiritual  crowd  of  money-makers,  log-rollers, 
and  pleasure-seekers  we  call  the  world.  These 
count  the  easiest  way  the  way  to  take;  and  the 
easiest  way  is  the  one  others  have  already  taken. 
The  common  verdict  of  the  unthinking  multi- 
tude is  accepted  without  question.  "Can  there 
any  good  thing  come  out  of  Nazareth?"  Why, 
certainly  not.  No  good  thing  ever  did  come 
from  a  new  place ;  and,  what  is  more,  we  are  busy 
making  mud-pies,  and  do  not  want  to  be  troubled 
about  either  Nazareth  or  good  things.  The 
poets  who  years  ago  fought  their  way  to  the 
front  are  great;  being  at  the  front  makes  them 
great,  and  there  the  matter  ends.  Of  course 
new  poets  want  recognition.  The  toad  may 
want  a  tail,  but  he  has  it  not.  We  take  poet 
and  toad  for  what  they  are.  It  may  be  that 
when  the  one  gets  a  tail  the  other  will  get  rec- 
ognition. 

Are  the  publishers  different  from  the  un- 
spiritual crowd  of  earth-worshipers?  On  the 
contrary,  they  are  a  part  of  that  crowd.  Pretty 
much  all  there  is  to  get  out  of  literature  they 
get  for  themselves.  The  writers  of  stories  pro- 
duce "marketable  stuff" — that  is  to  say,  the 
stuff  the  crowd  want,  and  will  pay  for  in  good 


152  A  FREE  LANCE 

money.  But  the  man  who,  in  these  days,  writes 
a  fine  poem  wastes  ink  that  might  be  more 
profitably  employed  in  casting  up  accounts  or 
in  making  out  bills.  No  publisher,  in  this  com- 
mercial age,  encourages  such  waste  of  good  ma- 
terial. 

The  poets,  great  and  small,  give  us,  if  they 
are  in  truth  poets,  and  not  merely  artistic  ver- 
sifiers, gladness  of  heart.  The  age  may  think 
poorly  of  them,  but  we  know  their  worth.  Pub- 
lishers may  not  be  willing  to  print  what  they 
have  written,  but  the  books  they  have  given  us 
we  will  cherish.  Surely  these  sons  of  light  have 
done  for  us  all  that  the  old  dramatist  Heywood 
represents  them  as  doing  for  himself  and  others. 
And  what  they  have  already  done  for  us,  they 
are  still  doing,  and  will  continue  to  do  so  long 
as  we  open  to  them  our  hearts,  and  drink  in  their 
inspiration  and  their  song. 

"They  cover  us  with  counsel  to  defend  us 
From  storms  without;  they  polish  us  within 
With  learning,  knowledge,  arts,  and  disciplines; 
All  that  is  nought  and  vicious  they  sweep  from  us 
Like   dust  and   cobwebs;   our   rooms   concealed 
Hang  with  the  costliest  hangings   'bout  the  walls, 
Emblems   and  beauteous   symbols   pictured  round." 

Many  centuries  before  our  English  bard  lived 


THE  CROWD  153 

and  wrote,  another  and  a  wiser  poet  sang  the 
just  praise  of  his  own  great  and  worthy  fellow- 
ship of  song: — 

'0$    SXfiioi;)  Zvriva  Movffat 
<f>(Xtuvrar  rXuKeprj  ol  and  aTOfiaro?  /5£et  auSrj. 
El  yap  Tt<r  ko\  iz(vOo<:  e%wv  vcoktj&Yi  dupup 
aCyrai  tcpaSiTjv  aKa^ijfievo<:^  aurdp  aoiboz 
Mouadwv  Oepditujv  K^ela  nporipwv  avdpt&Tztov 
Ofivrjffr),  fi.dicapdf  re  0eov<;y  o%° OXujxnov  i%ou<Ttv, 
a\(p'  SXe  8u6<f>povkiov  intXrjOerat^  ouBi  rt  K7)8i<ov 
fiijivTjrai  ra^iu)^  Se  Ttapirpaxs  8d>pa  6eua>v. 

Blessed  is  he  whom  the  Muses  love!  Sweetly  do  his 
words  flow  from  his  lips.  Is  there  one  afflicted  with  fresh 
sorrow,  pining  away  with  deep  grief?  Then  if  the  minstrel, 
servant  of  the  Muses,  sings  the  glorious  deeds  of  men  of 
yore,  the  praise  of  the  blessed  gods  who  dwell  in  Olympus, 
quickly  does  he  forget  his  sorrows,  nor  remembers  aught 
of  all  his  griefs;  for  the  gifts  of  these  goddesses  swiftly 
turn  his  woes  away. 


THE  CROWD 

fTl  HERE  is  no  excuse  for  sheriffs  in  the  South 
■*•  who  surrender  their  black  prisoners  to 
noisy  mobs.  Those  mobs  are  in  most  cases  cow- 
ardly and  easily  outwitted.  And,  still  further, 
all   sheriffs    and   officers    of   the   law   should   be 


154  A  FREE  LANCE 

taught  to  handle  large  bodies  of  men,  whether 
armed  or  unarmed.  No  crowd  is  to  be  trusted. 
It  matters  not  that  the  concourse  is  well  dis- 
posed; a  single  word  may  change  the  most 
peaceable  crowd  into  a  furious  mob.  No  wild 
animal  is  so  fierce  and  cruel  as  is  an  enraged 
mob,  and  yet  well-nigh  all  mobs  are  cowardly. 
That  is  their  one  good  feature;  it  renders  dis- 
persion possible  with  fewer  shots  and  a  much 
lighter  mortality. 

I  witnessed  the  Orange  Riot  in  the  City  of 
New  York  many  years  ago.  I  was  in  the  crowd, 
where  I  saw  deeds  of  shame  and  cruelty  that  I 
should  like  to  forget.  From  that  day  to  this 
I  have  dreaded  large  crowds.  A  crowd,  of 
whatever  kind,  is  always  to  be  viewed  with  ap- 
prehension; even  if  it  is  not  likely  to  become 
criminal,  still  it  may  easily  become  the  victim  of 
panic.  In  a  densely-packed  theatre  one  may 
at  once  change  all  the  fine  ladies  and  gallant 
gentlemen  into  a  mass  of  struggling  humanity 
by  shouting,  Fire !  A  little  smoke  oozing  out 
from  behind  the  proscenium  will  unfold  in  five 
seconds  more  human  nature  than  can  be  described 
upon  twice  as  many  pages  of  foolscap.  Do  not 
understand  me  to  say  that  there  are  no  brave 
men  and  serene  women  in  the  world.     There  are 


THE  BULL  MOOSE  IN  GREEK     155 

many  such.  What  I  wish  to  say  is  that  there 
are  fewer  such  men  and  women  than  the  easy- 
going optimist  would  have  us  believe.  The 
nobler  qualities  of  human  nature  are  with  the 
few,  and  only  when  we  are  governed  by  the  few 
are  we  governed  by  those  qualities.  You  may 
be  sure  that  there  is  little  wisdom  and  not  much 
courage  with  the  crowd. 


THE  BULL  MOOSE  IN  GREEK 

rilHE  prevision  of  the  seer  has  in  all  ages  of 
-**  our  world's  history  astonished  the  sons  of 
men.  Nearly  every  century  has  its  more  con- 
spicuous prophets,  who,  looking  down  the  ages, 
foretell  events  that  later  came  to  pass.  The 
Hebrew  prophets  stand  at  the  head,  and  after 
them  come  other  predicters  who,  without  inspira- 
tion, astonished  those  who  came  under  the  spell 
of  their  marvelous  genius.  In  still  later  times 
Swedenborg  captured  the  consciences  of  men. 
But  one  of  the  strangest  of  all  miracles  of  pre- 
vision is  that  of  the  Greek  dramatist  Euripides. 
He  seems  to  have  actually  seen  upon  the  far- 
away horizon  of  American  politics  our  race  of 
demagogues.     He  described  that  race;  and  who 


156  A  FREE  LANCE 

can  fail  of  seeing  Roosevelt  in  all  his  war-paint 
upon  that  classic  page,  as  the  never-to-be-envied 
chieftain  of  the  thankless  crew  "whom  like  am- 
bition joins"  to  sway  the  loveless  mob.  Could 
prophecy  come  nearer  home  than  do  these  lines 
that  took  their  rise  in  a  Greek  mind,  and  have 
wandered  down  the  ages  to  mirror  the  man  to 
whom  we  owe  so  little,  and  from  whom  we  have 
reason  to  fear  so  much?  Think  of  it — the  Bull 
Moose  in  Greek !  Is  it  not  like  the  prevision  of 
the  Hebrew  king  who  described  the  "naughty 
person"   of  Proverbs   vi:12-15? 

yA%dpiGTOv  u/jLUtv  ff7:ipfj.\  offot  fy {XT/yd pou? 
C^oDre  Tt(j.a<i  prthk  yiyvtoffKOiadi  fiot, 
o1  roo$  tylowz  filaTZTovres  ou  <£/oovn'CeTS, 
rjv  Tolfft  ~o).XoI$  7tpo$  /dpiv  UfTjzi  ri. 


THE  NEW  BEELZEBUB 

f  I  THE  parent  who  named  his  son  Beelzebub  has 
**■  retired  from  active  life,  and  taken  up  his 
abode  in  the  violent  ward  of  an  asylum  for  the 
insane ;  but  the  parent,  who,  by  precept  and  con- 
duct, educated  his  son  into  a  veritable  Beelzebub, 
was  elected  school-commissioner,  and  is  now  chair- 
man of  a  committee  charged  with  the  responsible 


MOSAICS  15? 

duty  of  devising  some  plan  for  the  better  moral 
training  of  the  young. 

MOSAICS 

I 

NO  one  ever  recovered  a  lost  faith  by  adver- 
tising for  it. 

II 

Good-natured  mediocrity  is  like  an  old  slipper : 
one  wears  it  when  he  has  nothing  better,  and  he 
is  sure  to  find  it  wonderfully  comfortable. 

Ill 

If  there  is  no  judge  in  heaven,  there  is  surely 
all  the  greater  need  for  a  judge  within  thine  own 
heart. 

IV 
There  is  always  at  the  heart  of  every  great 
happiness  a  sense  of  melancholy  without  which 
the   happiness   would  be   nothing   more  than   a 
trivial  gayety. 

V 

There   is   a   certain  companionship  in   sound. 

The  man  who  pokes  fun  at  death  whistles  to  keep 

his    courage    up.     Passing    a    graveyard    after 

dark,  he  thinks  to  scare  the  spectres  of  which 


158  A  FREE  LANCE 

he  is  afraid,  by  making  a  noise.  The  sound  of 
one's  own  voice  inspires  courage  even  when  noth- 
ing is  said  worth  the  saying. 

VI 

Who  administers  consolation  in  advance  of 
the  occasion  only  adds  a  new  sorrow  to  the  one 
he  would  assuage. 

VII 

Truth  casts  off  first  this  creed  and  then  that, 
as  the  serpent  sheds  year  after  year  its  once 
bright  and  glittering  skin.  The  integument, 
becoming  dry  and  useless,  must  perish,  but  the 
living  creature  survives.  Let  no  man  mourn  for 
Truth. 

VIII 

Whether  a  flag  is  worth  fighting  for  will  de- 
pend upon  what  that  flag  stands  for.  Uncon- 
ditional loyalty  to  any  country  is  treason  to 
mankind. 

IX 

"God  is  on  our  side!"  is  the  vainglorious  cry 
of   thousands.     How    few    inquire,   with   humble 
mind  and  honest  heart,  "Am  I  on  God's  side?" 
X 

"Thou  shalt  love  thy  neighbor  as  thyself;" 
this  is  surely  a  rule  than  which  none  can  be  more 


MOSAICS  159 

golden,  for  therein  is  taught  a  kind  of  self-love 
that  is  never  selfish.  We  can  love  others  only 
when  we  have  learned  to  love  ourselves  in  a  noble 
and  generous  fashion. 

XI 

Universal  suffrage  is  only  glorified  mob- rule; 
a  sort  of  ragamuffin  respectability. 

XII 

The  over-valuation  of  physical  culture  is  the 
great  fault  of  this  age.  We  are  frenzied  by  the 
too  rapid  development  of  our  material  resources. 

XIII 
I  am  not  averse  to  hearing  a  man  discourse 
about   himself,   if   only   he   will  make   that   self 
worthy  of  the  discourse. 

XIV 

Man  is  the  measure  of  his  own  universe.  Of 
every  circle  he  is  the  centre.  Only  that  which 
reflects  his  age-long  conflict  with  destiny  has  for 
him  enduring  interest. 

XV 

"Live  with  the  gods,"  wrote  Marcus  Aurelius ; 


160  A  FREE  LANCE 

but  that  must,  I  think,  depend  somewhat  upon 
the  willingness  of  the  gods  to  live  with  us. 

XVI 

Most  men  had  rather  be  thought  wicked  than 
weak,  and  yet  this  choice  is  itself  a  weakness. 

XVII 

Habit  is  the  old  man's   delight. 

XVIII 

"A  lie,"  wrote  Sophocles,  "never  lives  to  be 
old."     Perhaps  not,  but  it  lives  to  do  mischief. 

XIX 

If  the  source  of  all  wrongdoing  is  in  the  will, 
so  also  is  the  hidden  root  of  every  worthy  ac- 
tion. Not  what  I  am,  but  what  I  would  be  is 
the  one  important  thing.  Whether  I  perceive 
it  or  not,  I  am  proceeding  in  the  direction  of 
my  desire. 

XX 

The  man  who  strives  to  forget  Death  only 
thinks  of  it  the  more.  There  is  for  all  of  us 
but  one  way  of  escape  from  its  impending 
shadow,  and  that  we  find  in  strong  and  noble 
living. 


MOSAICS  161 

XXI 

The  rule  of  the  majority  is  often  a  very  un- 
worthy one.  Good  government  is  the  gift  of 
the  trained  few  to  the  incompetent  and  thought- 
less multitude. 

XXII 
His  lot  is  one  of  drudgery  whose  work  is  not 
a  part  of  himself. 

XXIII 
No  victory  is  final  that  is  not  just. 

XXIV 

A  man's  dread  of  death  and  a  child's  fear  of 
darkness  are  the  same  thing.  In  both  cases, 
Imagination  is  the  terror-worker,  and  in  both 
cases  the  remedy  is  Light. 

XXV 

In  the  end  a  man's  rights  and  his  necessities 
are  one. 

XXVI 

The  voices  that  shouted,  "Hosanna  to  the 
Son  of  David !"  cried  a  few  hours  later,  "Crucify 
Him!  Crucify  Him!"  Popular  applause  and 
popular  clamor  come  in  the  end  to  one  and  the 
same  thing.  The  hemlock  and  the  statue  are 
never  far  apart. 


162  A  FREE  LANCE 

XXVII 

God  is  not  God  because  He  is  infinite,  for 
space  and  duration  are  also  infinite;  but  He 
would  not  be  God  were  He  not  infinite. 

XXVIII 

We  speak  of  the  foreknowledge  of  God,  but 
how  can  One  who  never  was  nor  ever  will  be,  but 
always  is,  know  one  thing  before  another?  The 
Infinite  is  timeless,  and,  therefore,  without  pro- 
gression. 

XXIX 

I  doubt  all  arguments  about  God.  How  can 
one  reason  about  a  Being  who  is  above  all  logic, 
and  whose  will  is  law?  Yet  God  is  not  in  His 
nature,  nor  yet  in  His  attributes,  contrary  to 
reason ;  He  is  superior  to  reason. 

XXX 

The  man  who  contemplates  his  own  littleness 
without  humility,  and  his  own  imperfections 
without  disgust,  neither  loves  holiness  nor  fears 
sin. 

XXXI 

A  pure  democracy  means  savagery.  A  gov- 
ernment in  which  one  man  is  of  as  much  impor- 
tance as  his  neighbor  is  one  in  which  no  one  is 


MOSAICS  163 

of  any  importance.  The  man  who  advocates 
such  a  government  is  either  a  fool  or  a 
demagogue. 

XXXII 
There  are  men  who  believe  in  a  mobocracy  in 
which  every  man  is  his  own  lawyer,  jury  and 
judge.  The  man  who  wins  his  case  in  such 
a  government  is  the  one  who  is  most  vocif- 
erous. Whether  a  man  executes  or  gets  exe- 
cuted will  depend  upon  the  strength  of  his  biceps 
muscle.  The  man  who  wants  that  kind  of  gov- 
ernment should  support  Theodore  Roosevelt. 

XXXIII 

Materialism  as  a  system  is  easily  demolished, 
because  it  is  without  foundation ;  but  materialism 
as  a  tendency  of  the  worldly  mind  is  impregnable 
save  to  Divine  Grace,  because  it  has  a  real  foun- 
dation in  the  nature  of  the  man  who  entertains 
it. 

XXXIV 

Men  who  decry  speculation  still  call  them- 
selves scientific,  and  yet  no  science  could  live 
without  speculation.  But  the  speculation  must 
be  in  some  measure  fruitful — it  must  lead  up  to 
facts.  Experimentation,  in  which  every  man  of 
science   believes,   lies   behind  most   of  the   great 


164  A  FREE  LANCE 

discoveries,  and  yet  speculation  is  nothing  but 
mental  experimentation. 

XXXV 

It  is  generally  believed  that  the  majority 
should  rule,  but  I  think  our  world  would  be  in 
a  much  better  condition  were  the  minority  in 
power.  The  few  are  wiser  than  the  many.  The 
opinion  of  a  judge  is  usually  worth  more  than 
that  of  a  jury. 

XXXVI 

The  strong  nature  is  elastic.  A  weak  nature 
breaks  because  it  cannot  bend.  Obstinate  men 
are  never  strong. 

XXXTII 

There  are  those  who  think  Nietzsche's  lack  of 
geniality  and  of  consideration  for  others  was  due 
to  the  fact  that  he  never  married.  They  think 
that  with  a  good  wife  other  good  things  would 
have  come  to  him.  But  what  about  the  wife? 
Is  it  worth  while  to  reform  a  man  by  deforming 
a  woman?  Is,  then,  a  man  worth  so  much  more 
than  a  woman? 

XXXVIII 

Of  all  selfish  men  in  the  intellectual  world,  I 


LAIS  DEDICATES  HER  MIRROR     165 

think  Nietzsche  and  Schopenhauer  the  most  self- 
ish. I  wonder  if  Von  Hartmann  was  any  better. 
If  not,  I  fear  pessimism  makes  a  bad  showing. 
Scripture  tells  us  "No  man  liveth  unto  himself," 
but  these  men  seem  to  have  lived  for  nothing  bet- 
ter than  themselves ;  nor  did  they  in  dying  think, 
so  far  as  we  know,  of  anything  better  than  them- 
selves. 


LAIS  DEDICATES  HER  MIRROR  TO 

VENUS 

SEPTEMBER  1,  1912.  Came  upon  Prior's 
translation  of  Plato's  lines  on  Lais  in  her 
old  age,  dedicating  her  mirror  to  Venus.  Prior 
does  not  say  that  it  was  Lais  who  made  the 
dedication;  he  calls  her  "a  lady,"  and  we  must 
go  to  the  Greek  to  discover  her  identity.  He 
describes  her  mirror  as  a  "looking  glass,"  though 
it  was,  doubtless,  a  burnished  metal  mirror  such 
as  women  in  Rome  used  at  that  time.  What  most 
interests  me  in  this  connection  is  the  fact  that 
some  years  ago  I  came  upon  Plato's  lines  when 
I  had  not  yet  seen  Prior's  version.  I  translated 
the  Greek  lines  in  their  entirety,  and  the  transla- 
tion was  published  in  my  "Flowers  of  Song  from 
Many  Lands."     Prior  translated  only  the  first 


166  A  FREE  LANCE 

four  lines;  but  Austin  Dobson  says  that  they 
are  so  good  that  "Landor  might  have  been 
pleased  to  sign  them."  It  becomes  me  to  be 
modest,  for  I  am  a  fellow  translator.  Below 
are  the  two  versions. 

THE    LADY    WHO    OFFERS    HER    LOOKING    GLASS    TO 
VENUS 

Venus,  take  my  votive  glass, 
Since  I  am  not  what  I  was; 
What  from  this  day  I   shall  be, 
Venus,  let  me  never  see. 

— Matthew  Prior. 

lais  dedicates  her  mirror  to  venus 

Once  at  Greece  proud  Lais  mocked, — 

With  gay  lovers  laughed  all  day; 
Now  these  lovers  come  no  more, 

Mirth  and  song  are  passed  away. 
Venus,  take  this  glass  from  me, 

Since   I   old   and   wrinkled   grow; 
What  I  am  I  would  not  see, 

What  I  shall  be,  would  not  know. 
— F.  R.  M.  in  "Flowers  of  Song  from  Many  Lands." 

I   do   not  know   why   the   English   poet   tells 
us   his   lines   are   "after"  Plato,   since  they   are 


LAIS  DEDICATES  HER  MIRROR     167 

not  an  imitation  but  a  bona  fide  translation.  I 
prefer  my  own  rendition,  but  that  may  be  be- 
cause it  is  complete,  and  also  because  I  am  the 
translator.  Authors  are  literary  parents,  and 
naturally  love  their  own  mental  offspring.  So 
it  may  be  that,  were  Prior  now  living,  he  would 
not  give  a  rush  for  my  lines,  much  preferring 
his  own.  We  hear  of  cruel  parents  who  maltreat 
their  children,  but  we  never  hear  that  a  literary 
father  has  deserted  his  own  poems  or  derided 
his  own  essays.  We  are  more  kindly  disposed 
toward  paper  and  ink  than  we  are  toward  flesh 
and  blood;  we  treat  more  tenderly  a  printed 
page  than  a  smiling  face.  May  God  have  mercy 
upon  us,  and  save  us  from  such  cruel  selfishness! 
Many  a  man  has  given  up  wife,  home,  and  useful 
service  to  win  for  himself  political  or  literary 
honor.  We  are  so  easily  allured  and  carried 
away  by  the  vanity  of  our  own  foolish  hearts.  I 
cannot  think  that  preferring  the  evanescent 
praise  of  the  world  is  in  any  way  a  better  choice 
than  that  of  Lais,  who  loved  above  all  other 
things  the  flattery  of  the  learned  and  the  great. 
Who  was  Lais?  She  was  a  beautiful  and 
dissolute  Sicilian  woman,  who  added  to  her  mar- 
velous physical  charms  the  still  more  attractive 
enticement  of  fine  mental  culture.     At  first  the 


168  A  FREE  LANCE 

slave  of  Apelles,  who  loved  her,  and  who  bought 
her  that  he  might  educate  her,  she  became  the 
possessor  of  great  wealth  and  of  even  greater 
beauty.  Artists  studied  to  reproduce  the  charm 
of  her  presence  in  marble,  and  for  a  few  brief 
years  art,  learning,  and  whatever  else  was  worthy 
of  her  notice  did  her  abundant  honor.  All  we 
know  of  her  old  age  is  obtained  from  Epicrates, 
who  tells  us  that  she  died  destitute  and  alone. 
With  her  mirror  she  dedicated  and  surrendered 
to  the  goddess  of  beauty  all  that  was  left  of 
her  once  brilliant  life. 

SURROUNDINGS 

A  MAN  this  morning  told  me  that  his  lack  of 
-*■*•  education  was  mainly  due  to  the  meanness 
of  his  surroundings.  But  it  was  in  the  dirty 
Soho  streets  that  Blake  saw  the  earliest  of  his 
divine  visions.  A  man  may  build  him  a  house 
for  his  soul  to  dwell  in  where  the  sons  of  mud 
see  nothing  better  than  their  own  rudeness  and 
vileness.  And  in  that  house,  lighted  by  the  glory 
of  heaven,  he  may  abide  in  wonder  and  gladness 
all  the  days  of  his  life  on  earth.  Emerson 
heard  the  song  celestial,  and  gazed  upon  scenes 
of  marvelous  splendor  in  even  the  "mud  and  scum 


THE  REWARD  OF  VIRTUE        169 

of  things."  A  man  may  not  be  the  creator  of 
(circumstances,  but  neither  is  he  wholly  their 
creature. 

THE  REWARD  OF  VIRTUE 

WHAT  a  comment  on  the  reward  of  virtue  is 
the  preservation  of  Ovid's  works.  Many 
excellent  books  of  the  old  Greek  and  Roman  days 
are  lost,  perhaps  forever.  Of  some  of  these  we 
know  nothing  save  the  fact  that  they  once  ex- 
isted. Some  books  have  been  preserved  only  in 
part,  or  in  a  mutilated  condition.  Think  of 
Livy,  represented  only  by  tattered  remnants  of 
his  invaluable  history.  Think  of  the  perished 
plays  of  some  of  the  old  dramatists  of  those 
early  times.  But  Ovid,  lascivious  and  blas- 
phemous, lives  on,  with  not  a  poem  lost.  Ovid 
was  in  his  own  country  and  age  accounted  a  man 
of  evil  influence.  His  own  people  banished  him, 
and  his  works  were  regarded  as  harmful.  Yet 
to-day  his  books,  unabridged  and  in  a  perfect 
condition,  so  far  as  we  know,  may  be  had  by 
any  school-boy  for  a  shilling.  I  am  not  sorry 
that  his  poems  have  come  down  to  our  age,  for 
they  are  of  value  to  scholars,  and  there  is  in 
them  much  beauty  and  worth.    I  am  glad  we  have 


170  A  FREE  LANCE 

them,  but  I  sorrow  that  we  have  lost  other  and 
better  works.  It  seems  strange  that  Time 
should  spare  all  of  Ovid's  writings,  and  obliterate 
so  much  of  the  work  of  other  authors  who  wrote 
as  well  from  a  literary  point  of  view,  and  much 
better  from  an  ethical  standpoint. 

PHYSICAL  CONTACT  AND  SOCIAL  RECOGNITION 

T  FIND  myself  in  perfect  agreement  with 
■*■  James  Russell  Lowell,  who  disliked  being 
handled.  He  was  pleased  with  Howells  because 
Howells  did  not  want  upon  every  occasion  to 
shake  hands  with  him.  Lowell  often  made  it  the 
condition  of  his  acceptance  of  an  invitation  to 
a  social  or  public  function,  that  he  should  not 
be  compelled  to  shake  hands  with  people.  The 
promiscuous  shaking  of  hands  is  a  vulgar  and 
offensive  familiarity.  There  can  be  no  more 
reason  why  a  man  should  take  liberties  with 
my  hand  than  with  my  shoulder  blade  or  my 
kneepan.  Apart  from  the  rudeness,  there  is 
something  devitalizing  in  the  touch  of  many 
hands  having  different  magnetic  conditions,  and 
being,  in  some  cases,  capable  of  conveying  dis- 
ease. When  I  was  installed  pastor  of  the  First 
Congregational  Church  in  Great  Barrington,  the 


SOCIAL  RECOGNITION  171 

entire  congregation  filed  by  the  pulpit  after 
service,  each  person  shaking  my  hand  and  twist- 
ing my  arm  with  what  was  the  next  day  de- 
scribed in  the  Berkshire  Courier  as  "a  hearty 
good  will."  I  got  back  into  the  Manse,  when  it 
was  all  over,  with  a  feeling  of  gratitude  that  I 
had  escaped  a  compound  fracture. 

There  lived  in  Middletown,  N.  Y.,  where  I 
was  for  a  time  the  pastor  of  a  Congregational 
Church,  a  man  who  was  in  the  habit  of  emphasiz- 
ing what  he  had  to  say  by  poking  his  finger  into 
the  ribs  of  his'  interlocutor.     He  called  it  "nudg- 
ing," but  it  was,  in  fact,  nothing  less  than  an 
offered  indignity.     It  got  him  into  trouble,  for 
one  day,  having  waxed  peculiarly  earnest  in  con- 
versation with  a  stranger,  he  gave  him  an  unus- 
ually vicious  thrust,  and  in  return  had  his  hat 
knocked  from  his  head.    Buttonholing  a  man  to 
prevent  him   from  escaping  a  long-winded   dis- 
course is  another  atrocious  familiarity ;  it  is  also 
an  abridgment  of  a  natural  right,  for  every  one 
has  an  inalienable  right  (if  any  such  right  there 
be)    to   shake   off,  with  whatever  violence  may 
be  necessary,  the  wearisome  bore.     Like  a  vam- 
pire that  sucks  the  very  life  from  a  man,  the 
bore  exhausts  the  vitality  of  whoever  must,  for 
one  reason  or  another,  listen  to  his  dreary  and 


172  A  FREE  LANCE 

interminable  flow  of  words.  I  have  known  an 
old  dotard  to  drive  an  entire  company  well-nigh 
crazy  because  no  person  could  be  found  rude 
enough  to  check  his  wearisome  iteration  of  mean- 
ingless words.  The  true  gentleman  fences  him- 
self about  with  propriety.  He  observes  the  fit- 
ness of  things,  and  has  great  respect  for  es- 
tablished rules  and  for  the  customs  that  prevent 
encroachment.  To  the  rude  and  vulgar  he  seems 
encased  by  a  thin  sheet  of  ice.  He  will  not  be 
handled. 

There  is  a  certain  animal  familiarity  among 
men  and  women  of  the  lower  orders  of  society; 
an  expression  of  kindly  feeling  through,  or  by 
means  of  the  sense  of  touch.  Men  throw  their 
arms  around  each  other,  pat  each  other  upon  the 
shoulder,  hold  each  other's  hand,  salute  with 
a  kiss  upon  meeting  and  upon  parting.  To 
them  actual  contact  seems  the  only  adequate  ex- 
pression of  mutual  interest  and  good  will.  They 
fondle  each  other's  children,  dandle  them  upon 
the  knee,  toss  them  up  and  down,  and  stroke 
them  very  much  as  one  would  stroke  a  kitten. 
With  finer  training  comes  a  disinclination  to  such 
expressions  of  kindly  feeling,  and  yet  there  is 
nothing  in  the  training  itself  that  necessarily 
lessens  the  feeling.     Still  the  reserve  is  not  in- 


SOCIAL  RECOGNITION  173 

frequently  mistaken  for  indifference  and  lack 
of  personal  interest.  I  am  persuaded  that  much 
of  the  misunderstanding  between  "the  classes  and 
the  masses"  comes  of  just  this  difference  in  ex- 
pression. 

It  may  be  inquired,  "Of  what  consequence  is  it 
whether  the  one  way  or  the  other  prevail?  Are 
not  all  our  expressions  of  inward  feeling  a  mat- 
ter of  custom  and  habit  only?"  Doubtless 
habit  has  much  to  do  with  the  differences  pointed 
out,  and  yet  there  is  in  them  something  vastly 
more  important.  In  the  respect  I  show  another 
I  foster  self-respect.  Fine  address  is  seldom  far 
removed  from  fine  feeling.  Behavior  is  the  sign 
we  hang  out  to  show  others  what  may  be  ex- 
pected of  us.  In  what  we  do  we  reveal  what  we 
are.  Social  distinctions  are  not  wholly  ar- 
bitrary. The  wall  I  construct  around  my  field 
is  exterior  to  that  field,  and  is  in  no  sense  what- 
ever a  part  of  the  field.  But  social  barriers  are 
a  part  of  society  itself,  and  for  that  reason  so- 
ciety could  not  exist  without  them.  The  wall 
does  not,  as  has  been  said,  form  any  part  of  my 
field,  nor  is  it  necessary  to  the  existence  of  that 
field.  It  only  defines  it,  and  prevents  strangers 
from  intruding  upon  it.  But  the  rules  and  reg- 
ulations with  which  society  surrounds  itself  not 


174  A  FREE  LANCE 

only  prevent  intrusion,  but  are  themselves  a  part 
of  the  society  they  guard  and  protect.  They 
are  absolutely  essential.  There  could  be  no 
society  (at  least  no  select  society)  without  them. 
They  prevent  different  classes  from  flowing  to- 
gether. They  prevent  destructive  affiliations. 
But  for  these  barriers  all  classes  and  conditions 
of  men  and  women  would  mix  and  mingle  in  in- 
describable confusion.  Such  a  mixing  of  het- 
erogeneous elements  could  only  prove  destruc- 
tive to  everything  like  culture.  There  is  now 
much  foolish  talk  about  Democracy.  But  social 
order  leans  in  the  other  direction.  There  could 
be  neither  society  nor  civilization  without  separa- 
tion and  walls  of  demarcation. 

To  return  to  the  topic  with  which  we  started, 
and  of  which  this  paper  primarily  treats:  It 
would  be  well,  I  think,  to  insist  upon  a  radical 
reform  in  our  way  of  receiving  guests  at  a  social 
entertainment  or  a  reception  of  any  kind.  For 
a  relatively  long  time  (relatively  as  compared 
with  the  other  "functions"  of  the  afternoon  or 
evening)  those  who  receive  must  remain  stand- 
ing in  line  in  some  conspicuous  place  in  the  room. 
Before  them  pass  in  another  line  the  guests  who 
have  been  invited,  and  who  are  to  be  presented 
as  an  act  of  social  recognition.     The  point  of 


SOCIAL  RECOGNITION  175 

contact  all  along  the  two  parallel  and  meeting 
lines  is  marked  by  the  customary  felicitations, 
and  with  these  there  is  the  usual  shaking  of 
hands.  The  delicate  lady  who  is,  perhaps,  in- 
disposed, and  who  under  any  circumstances 
would  naturally  shrink  from  physical  contact 
with  an  entire  stranger,  must  extend  her  hand 
to  the  guests,  one  after  the  other,  as  they  come 
in  the  line  that  often  seems  to  the  jaded  nerves 
well-nigh  interminable.  Or,  if  she  feels  herself 
excused  from  the  initiative,  she  must  still  take 
the  hand  that  is  proffered.  I  do  not  know  what 
is  the  precise  nature  of  the  pathological  diffi- 
culty involved,  but  the  taking  of  many  hands, 
one  after  the  other,  is  to  most  men  and  to  nearly 
all  women  a  nerve-exhausting  experience.  Some 
persons  can  endure  it  for  only  a  very  brief  time. 
Those  who  have  talked  with  me  upon  the  subject 
say  that  after  a  little  season  there  is  felt  at 
the  base  of  the  brain  a  nervous  depression  which 
is  soon  accompanied  by  a  corresponding  mental 
depression.  I  know  the  feeling,  for  I  have  ex- 
perienced it  many  times.  At  its  worst  it 
amounts  to  something  like  despair.  Earth  and 
Heaven  seem  to  be  failures,  and  life  appears  de- 
void of  all  interest. 

Could  the  sacredness  of  the  King's  person  be 


176  A  FREE  LANCE 

so  extended  as  to  cover  all  men  and  women  every- 
where, there  might  be  more  regard  in  the  minds 
of  all  for  personal  presence.  It  was  not  exactly 
regicide  to  touch  the  Royal  Person,  but  it  was 
something  more  than  Use  majeste.  The  safe- 
guard was  necessary  in  earlier  times,  and  no 
doubt  it  is  necessary  even  now.  No  sovereign 
is  safe  unattended.  But  the  hedging  about  of 
the  King's  person  meant  more  than  safety;  it 
meant  as  well  honor.  Familiarity  would  soon 
deprive  the  King  of  his  peculiar  dignity.  He 
would  be  as  other  men,  while  at  the  same 
time  other  men  would  not  be  in  any  wise  like 
unto  the  King.  It  would  be  a  leveling  down- 
ward. 

There  are  on  record  several  instances  of  unin- 
tentional disregard  of  the  rules  of  decorum  and 
fitness  that  hedge  about  a  King.  Two  men,  at 
different  times,  were  guilty  of  touching  the  King 
without  permission.  They  were,  both  of  them, 
of  high  rank  and  were  quite  at  home  in  the  com- 
pany of  their  sovereign,  and  yet  neither  of  them 
was  spared.  They  were  put  to  death.  Birth 
and  position  only  made  matters  worse.  They 
might,  for  aught  that  could  be  known  to  the 
contrary,  hold  the  monarch  in  contempt.  It 
might  be  that  they  aspired  to  the  crown.     Cer- 


SOCIAL  RECOGNITION  177 

tainly  the  dignity  of  their  rank  rendered  their 
conduct  suspicious.  But  no  man  of  humble 
birth  could  be  suspected  of  such  treasonable  de- 
signs. We  fear  little  from  insignificant  men. 
The  Pope  will  wash  once  in  the  year  the  feet  of 
pilgrims  and  of  begging  friars.  The  act  passes 
for  one  of  noble  condescension.  It  is  so  far 
from  wounding  the  papal  pride  that  it,  in  truth, 
indulges  it,  for  it  wins  the  applause  of  the 
thoughtless.  It  is  a  sham  humility,  another 
way  of  playing  Lady  Bountiful.  You  will 
never  hear  that  the  Pope  has  washed  the  feet  of 
Kings,  for  that  would  be  an  act  of  real  humility. 
Kings  and  Popes  may  patronize  the  lowly ;  they 
may  wink  at  the  short-comings  of  peasants,  for 
these  can  do  them  no  harm.  But  the  case  is 
different  with  men  higher  up.  The  beggar  may 
be  dismissed  with  contempt,  but  the  noble  must 
die. 

Let  the  gentleman  keep  his  distance  if  he  would 
be  accounted  a  gentleman.  All  cheap  familiari- 
ties disgust.  Noble  qualities  demand  large 
space  for  growth.  We  cannot  honor  each  the 
other  at  too  close  a  range.  Many  logs  piled 
upon  the  fire  may  extinguish  the  flame.  An 
over-display  of  affection  will  destroy  what  meas- 
ure of  real  affection  there  actually  is. 


178  A  FREE  LANCE 

In  olden  times  men  were  afraid  of  the  Evil 
Eye  and  of  the  baneful  influence  of  strangers. 
Against  these  the  King  must  be  defended.  A 
deputation  from  a  distant  country  could  not 
come  into  the  presence  of  the  sovereign  to  whom 
it  was  accredited  before  it  had  passed  between 
two  fires  which  were  supposed  to  destroy  the 
baneful  influences  that  came  with  the  deputa- 
tion. In  the  Congo  Basin  an  ambassador  could 
not  see  the  King  to  whom  he  was  deputed  be- 
fore he  had  bathed  in  two  brooks  on  two  succes- 
sive days.  The  clothes  of  a  stranger  must  not 
touch  the  King.  All  sacred  persons  were  dan- 
gerous to  touch.  Priests  as  well  as  Kings  were 
hedged  about  by  rules  and  regulations.  To 
touch  the  priest  was  sacrilege  and  to  put  one's 
hand  upon  the  King  was  treason.  Royal  and 
priestly  taboos  surrounded  all  sacred  persons 
with  a  web,  the  strands  of  which  were  unyielding 
as  steel  and  yet  so  fine  as  to  be  invisible.  En- 
cased in  diaphanous  armor,  the  sacred  persons 
were  invulnerable.  As  a  bird  beats  its  wing 
against  a  window-pane,  not  discerning  the  glass, 
so  most  of  those  who  would  injure  the  King 
struck  only  his  armor.  Emerson  thinks  that 
Anderson's  story  of  the  cobweb  of  cloth  so  finely 
woven  as  to  be  invisible  signifies  manners,  but  I 


SOCIAL  RECOGNITION  179 

do  not  believe  the  story  has  any  relation  to  man- 
ners as  we  usually  understand  that  word.  To 
me  the  transparent  web  stands  for  that  fine 
repulsion  with  which  the  great  invest  them- 
selves. It  is  an  armor  through  which  stupidity 
cannot  penetrate,  and  against  which  the  bitter- 
est hatred  shivers  its  lance.  It  is  so  fine  that 
eyes  of  glass  and  brains  of  mud  cannot  discern 
it,  and  yet  it  is  so  firm  and  sure  that  the  elect 
soul  may  trust  it  with  implicit  confidence.  It  is 
not  something  put  on;  it  is  a  subtile  spiritual 
atmosphere,  clear  and  cold.  The  man  who  has 
this,  so  Emerson  tells  us,  will  need  no  auxiliaries 
to  his  personal  presence. 

Yet  it  is  also  true  that  no  man  can  be  a 
gentleman  without  kindness.  Reserve  is  one 
thing,  indifference  is  another.  The  man  who 
cares  nothing  for  the  happiness  of  others  is  very 
far  from  that  compassion  which  is  essential  to 
courtesy.  Nothing  is  more  rude  than  selfish- 
ness. The  man  of  fine  feeling  recognizes  the 
relation  which  he  sustains  to  the  surrounding 
world.  It  was  charged  against  the  literary 
men  of  thirty  or  forty  years  ago  in  New  Eng- 
land that  they  stood  apart  from  their  fellow- 
men;  that  they  were  cold  and  inaccessible.  Mr. 
Emerson  has  been  described  as  an  intellectual 


180  A  FREE  LANCE 

icicle.  Certain  wits  declared  that  while  other 
men  had  within  their  veins  good  warm  blood, 
Mr.  Emerson  had  only  iced-water,  with  snow- 
flakes  for  blood-globules.  Boston  was  repre- 
sented as  a  city  walled  in  by  its  own  colossal 
conceit  and  self-importance.  No  doubt  the  New 
England  literati  were  somewhat  exclusive.  The 
professions  and  the  social  circles  must,  well-nigh 
all  of  them,  adopt  defensive  measures.  Phy- 
sicians have  their  code  of  medical  ethics  so  framed 
as  to  exclude  professional  pretenders.  Lawyers 
have  rules  and  regulations  with  which  they  shut 
out  from  their  legal  associations  wrongdoers. 
Authors  protect  themselves  in  the  same  way. 
Social  circles  give  what  is  called  "the  cold  shoul- 
der";  and  of  all  cold  things,  that  kind  of  a 
shoulder  is  the  coldest.  The  studied  neglect  of 
a  beautiful  lady,  well  painted,  powdered,  and 
be  jeweled,  is  something  to  carry  dismay  to  the 
stoutest  heart.  Women  are  more  gifted  than 
are  men  in  the  silent  but  remorseless  warfare 
of  snubs  and  contempt.  Only  those  who  have 
been  wounded  know  how  sharp  and  effective  a 
weapon  is  a  woman's  tongue.  The  French  have 
a  quatrain  that,  in  my  "Book  of  Quatrains,"  I 
have  rendered  into  English  thus ; 


SOCIAL  RECOGNITION  181 

The  tongue  is  woman's  sword,  and  to  it  she  doth 

trust ; 
By  constant  use  she  keeps  it  always  free  from  rust; 
Deep  in  the  heart  of  man  she  sheathes  its  glittering 

blade ; 
And  lo !  the  mighty  hero  falls  before  the  timid  maid. 

Man  has  no  shaft  so  deadly  as  is  the  scornful 
glance  of  a  woman's  eye.  Women  are  more 
sentimental,  enthusiastic,  and  gentle  than  are 
men;  but  men  are  more  just,  serious,  and  merci- 
ful than  are  even  the  most  perfectly  constructed 
women.  I  think  that  the  calm,  cold,  and  pol- 
ished indifference  attributed  to  the  Boston 
literati  (I  say  attributed,  for  I  doubt  if  it  was 
so  hard  a  thing  to  overcome  as  some  have 
claimed)  would  have  been  much  more  repellent 
had  the  great  New  England  writers  been  women 
and  not  men.  Those  who  were  privileged  to 
know  personally  Emerson,  Thoreau,  Holmes, 
Lowell,  Longfellow,  Whipple,  and  Aldrich  all 
bear  witness  to  the  kindness  and  willingness  to 
help  others  which  ever  dwelt  in  their  hearts  and 
actuated  their  lives.  Octavius  Brooks  Frothing- 
ham  was  in  his  day  regarded  as  a  very  difficult 
man  to  approach,  and  yet  Julia  Ward  Howe, 
who  knew  him  well,  told  me  that  he  was  the  most 
courteous    and    considerate    man    she    had    ever 


182  A  FREE  LANCE 

known,  and  my  limited  acquaintance  with  him 
confirms  her  statement.  Thoreau  was  in  many 
ways  different  from  the  other  New  England  writ- 
ers named.  He  had  less  interest  in  his  fellow 
men,  and  was  less  open  to  surprises  of  every  kind. 
He  lived  at  the  time  of  the  Millerite  excitement, 
when  many  persons  parted  from  property  or 
reason  or  from  both.  Thousands  of  men  and 
women  were  expecting  the  end  of  the  world. 
Thoreau  gave  no  heed  to  any  of  these  things. 
He  said  he  would  not  go  around  the  corner  "to 
see  the  world  blow  up."  The  common,  every- 
day events  seemed  to  him  more  worthy  of  at- 
tention; to  him  they  were  more  important. 
But  even  Thoreau  was  not  so  difficult  to  ap- 
proach as  many  timid  souls  have  imagined. 

Public  men  are  always  in  more  or  less  peril. 
Their  prominence  attracts  attention;  their  suc- 
cess awakens  envy  and  jealousy;  their  peculiar 
opportunity  or  privilege  will  often  lead  men  to 
make  more  or  less  effort  to  use  such  opportunity 
or  privilege  for  their  own  selfish  ends.  The 
sovereign  is  always  liable  to  assassination. 
Wealthy  men  are  often  robbed.  Men  distin- 
guished in  the  world  of  letters  are,  it  is  true, 
not  so  liable  to  personal  violence,  but  they  are 
often   pursued  by  fanatics,   castle-builders,   and 


SOCIAL  RECOGNITION  183 

notoriety-hunters.  Some  of  our  public  men  have 
all  their  peace  of  mind,  no  small  part  of  their 
time,  and  much  of  their  usefulness  stolen  from 
them  by  vast  swarms  of  self-seekers.  How 
shall  they  escape  these  noxious  creatures?  Has 
the  literary  man  any  better  weapon  at  his  com- 
mand with  which  he  may  defend  himself  than 
just  that  "thin  sheet  of  ice"  of  which  so  many 
of  his  admirers  complain?  To  be  cordial  is 
sometimes  to  invite  destruction.  Think  of  the 
callow  crowd  of  autograph-hunters  that  pur- 
sued Longfellow  and  Lowell  day  and  night. 
Think  of  the  strangers  from  over  the  sea  and 
from  over  the  prairie  who  pestered  Emerson,  and 
who  could  be  gotten  rid  of  only  by  a  nipping 
frost.  There  are  a  few  men  who  have  won  in- 
ferior places  in  literary  recognition  by  attaching 
themselves  to  men  of  real  ability.  There  are 
many  more  who  are  endeavoring  to  accomplish 
the  same  feat.  They  are  the  "mixed  multitude" 
of  Exodus ;  they  only  impede  the  progress  of 
well  equipped  pilgrims  who  journey  from  the 
obscurity  of  our  common  birth  to  the  far-away 
literary  standing  of  our  dreams.  They  are  as 
"sounding  brass  and  tinkling  cymbal,"  making 
a  great  noise  whilst  they  contribute  nothing  to 
the   harmony    and   beauty   of   letters.     Are   not 


184  A  FREE  LANCE 

men  of  genius  and  scholarship  fully  justified  in 
guarding  their  time  and  toil  against  such  as 
these  ? 

FRANCES  POWER  COBBE 

FRANCES  POWER  COBBE,  with  whom  it 
was  my  delightful  privilege  to  correspond 
during  the  closing  years  of  her  useful  and  beau- 
tiful life,  and  whose  last  contribution  to  litera- 
ture was,  I  suppose,  the  brief  "Introductory 
Notice"  that  prefaces  my  little  book,  "Conse- 
crated Womanhood,"  was  born  December  4,  1822, 
and  passed  her  early  life  in  a  home  of  luxury 
and  refinement.  A  fashionable  school  at 
Brighton  contributed  something  to  her  mental 
equipment,  but  could  not  have  added  much  to 
ihe  moral  force  and  unyielding  integrity  that  in 
later  years  made  her  the  noble  champion  of  so 
many  worthy  causes,  and  the  kind-hearted  and 
self-sacrificing  friend  of  dumb  animals.  Her 
school  was  like  most,  perhaps  all,  of  the  schools 
for  young  ladies  at  that  time:  a  place  where 
showy  and  empty  accomplishments  were  strenu- 
ously but  indifferently  taught  to  the  exclusion  of 
everything  like  solid  attainment  and  useful  in- 
formation. Young  ladies  were  never  allowed  to 
know  anything  about  aifatomy  and  physiology, 


FRANCES  POWER  COBBE  185 

which,  with  most  of  the  natural  sciences,  were 
regarded  as  too  vulgar  for  what  was  then  com- 
monly described  as  "the  female  mind."  This 
mind,  which  was  supposed  to  be  peculiar  to 
women,  was  represented  as  being  quite  too  deli- 
cate and  fragile  for  the  reception  of  any  other 
kinds  of  knowledge  than  those  which  concern 
themselves  with  the  working  of  "samplers,"  the 
doing  of  various  sorts  of  ornamental  needlework, 
the  painting  of  indescribable  pictures  on  velvet 
and  china,  and  the  graceful  execution  of  difficult 
figures  in  the  dances  of  the  period. 

Miss  Cobbe  has  left  us  in  her  autobiography  a 
witty  and  just  description  of  the  educational 
farce  to  which  the  young  ladies  of  her  day  were 
treated,  and  for  which  their  parents  and  guard- 
ians spent  large  sums  of  money  that  might  have 
been  put  to  better  uses.  It  was  only  when  her 
school-days  were  ended  that  her  real  education 
commenced.  She  had  an  active  and  inquiring 
mind,  not  at  all  feminine  according  to  the  stand- 
ard of  that  day.  It  was  a  mind  disinclined  to 
receive  anything  on  faith  without  investigation, 
and  naturally  disposed  to  resent  the  ill-fitting 
and  arbitrary  restraints  of  conventional  life. 
Like  most  of  us,  she  inherited  the  religious  con- 
victions of  generations  of  stout-hearted  believers. 


186  A  FREE  LANCE 

There  had  been  five  archbishops  and  one  bishop 
among  her  near  kindred. 

Her  father  and  mother  were  orthodox — that  is 
to  say,  they  were  followers  of  John  Calvin. 
Perhaps  their  Calvinism  was  of  the  attenuated 
variety,  but  it  was  still  Calvinism,  and  had  about 
it  much  of  the  frigidity  and  rigidity  of  the  origi- 
nal article.  Against  all  this,  when  not  yet 
twenty-two  years  old,  she  rebelled  with  a  deter- 
mination worthy  of  her  religious  heritage  and 
of  the  "solemn  and  awful"  domestic  training  to 
which  she  had  been  subjected.  The  Evangelical 
beliefs  of  her  home  were  abandoned,  not,  as  has 
been  represented,  through  the  influence  of  Theo- 
dore Parker,  with  whose  writings  she  became  ac- 
quainted early  in  life,  and  with  whom  she  cor- 
responded, but  through  what  may  be  called  a 
natural  development  of  the  spiritual  perception. 

Thousands  of  earnest  and  deeply  religious  na- 
tures have  been  led  by  the  early  austerity  of  a 
severely  orthodox  home  (I  give  the  word  "ortho- 
dox" its  unfortunate  but  common  meaning, 
though  it  cannot  be  denied  that  the  word  has 
also  a  good  meaning  of  which  it  has  not  yet  been 
wholly  despoiled  by  the  brutality  of  ecclesiastical 
fisticuffs),  to  question  and  renounce  even  the 
most  fundamental  truths  of  natural  as  well  as  of 


FRANCES  POWER  COBBE  187 

revealed  religion.  Such  convictions  as  must  be 
swallowed  as  one  swallows  a  nauseous  medicine 
are  not  likely  to  do  much  good  and  may  accom- 
plish some  mischief.  Miss  Cobbe's  change  of 
belief  was  preceded,  as  such  changes  usually  are 
in  earnest  and  devout  minds,  by  a  long  and  dis- 
tressing period  of  spiritual  uncertainty,  during 
which  she  plunged  into  a  great  darkness  of  soul 
whence  at  last  she  emerged  with  little  or  no  help 
from  without.  Her  father,  who  was  greatly  in- 
censed by  what  he  regarded  as  a  fearful  apostasy 
on  her  part,  insisted  upon  his  Church  of  Eng- 
land doctrines,  which  were  of  the  old  and  rigor- 
ous kind,  as  a  sovereign  remedy  for  the  sickness 
of  her  spiritual  nature. 

Miss  Cobbe  fell  in  with  the  works  of  Theodore 
Parker  just  about  the  time  she  was  undergoing 
the  great  change  in  her  faith  which  gave  new  in- 
spiration and  purpose  to  her  life.  The  change 
was  not  in  the  direction  of  atheism  of  any  kind, 
but  rather  in  that  of  a  decided  and  enthusiastic 
Deism.  She  discarded  what  is  commonly  called, 
at  least  in  Evangelical  circles,  Christianity — 
that  is  to  say,  Christianity  as  a  supernatural  re- 
ligion. Her  views  were  largely  those  enter- 
tained by  modern  Unitarians.  The  Unitarians 
of  to-day  adopt  the  very  opinions  they  denounced 


188  A  FREE  LANCE 

Parker  for  entertaining.  So  the  world  goes. 
The  heterodoxy  of  the  present  is  the  orthodoxy 
of  the  future.  Men  stone  the  prophets  for 
teaching  what  their  children  are  sure  to  believe ; 
and  they,  in  turn,  stone  other  prophets,  and  thus 
from  generation  to  generation  the  assault  is  con- 
tinued. No  one  learns  wisdom  from  the  un- 
ending contention  that  always  comes  to  the 
same  result. 

Miss  Cobbe  entered  into  correspondence  with 
Parker,  became  his  fast  friend,  was  with  him 
when  he  died,  and  later  edited  his  works.  The 
friendship  between  these  two  souls  was  peculiarly 
noble  and  tender.  When  they  first  met  (after 
years  of  correspondence),  Parker  was  sick  unto 
death.  He  would  not  trust  himself  too  much  in 
her  society;  he  said  it  made  his  heart  swell  too 
high.  He  had  fought  single-handed  the  entire 
religious  world,  and  the  appreciation  and  sym- 
pathy of  a  woman  like  Frances  Power  Cobbe  was 
a  greater  gladness  than  he  thought  himself  able 
to  sustain.  The  beautiful  friendship  of  these 
two  reminds  us  of  the  friendship  between  Dr. 
Channing  and  Lucy  Aikin;  a  friendship  that 
lightened  with  calm  and  heavenly  radiance  six- 
teen years  of  the  great  preacher's  life. 
"Never,"   wrote  Lucy   Aikin   to   Dr.   Channing, 


FRANCES  POWER  COBBE         189 

"are  you  forgotten  when  my  soul  seeks  com- 
munion with  our  common  Father;  and  when  I 
strive  most  earnestly  to  overcome  some  evil 
propensity,  or  to  make  some  generous  sacrifice, 
the  thought  of  you  gives  me  strength  not  my 
own." 

In  1852  Miss  Cobbe  was  very  ill,  and  for  a 
time  it  was  thought  that  she  could  not  live.  She 
was  confined  to  her  room  many  weeks,  and  the 
thought  of  the  brevity  and  uncertainty  of  life 
impressed  her  mind  deeply.  From  that  time 
dates  her  resolve  to  work  earnestly  for  the  good 
of  others;  to  pass,  "like  bread  at  sacrament," 
the  truth  she  had  come  to  know,  and  which  she 
in  some  measure  published  in  her  "Essay  on  the 
Theory  of  Intuitive  Morals" — a  book  which  she 
tells  us  was  suggested  to  her  by  the  reading  of 
Kant's  "Metaphysics  of  Ethics."  It  is  a  noble 
work,  full  of  inspiration,  and  aglow  with  en- 
thusiasm for  humanity.  The  reasoning  is  clear 
and  close,  and  through  every  page  of  the  book 
there  breathes  a  deeply  religious  spirit. 

In  1864  Miss  Cobbe  published  her  "Broken 
Lights,"  a  book  mainly  in  review  of  the  Eng- 
lish Church.  In  1880  she  gave  the  world  "The 
Duties  of  Women."  Some  of  her  other  works, 
published  between  the  dates  already  named,  are 


190  A  FREE  LANCE 

"An  Essay  on  Religion's  Duty,"  "The  Cities  of 
the  Past,"  "Italics,"  and  "Studies  New  and  Old 
of  Ethical  and  Social  Subjects."  I  treasure  a 
copy  of  the  last-named  book  which  she  sent  me 
not  long  before  her  death,  and  which  has  the 
added  charm  of  a  personal  inscription.  Her 
"Darwinism  and  Morals"  is  a  book  of  unusual 
interest.  Her  "Hopes  of  the  Human  Race"  and 
her  book  called  "The  Peak  in  Darien"  possess  a 
certain  charm,  not  so  much  of  style  as  of  at- 
mosphere. 

Every  one  knows  of  Miss  Cobbe's  interest  in 
and  work  for  the  "Woman's  Suffrage  Move- 
ment." With  a  woman  of  her  temperament  to 
sympathize  with  any  cause,  especially  if  the  cause 
be  unpopular,  is  openly  and  aggressively  to 
enter  the  lists  of  its  knights-errant,  and  go  out 
in  search  of  the  foe.  Of  course  in  England  the 
ballot  is  not  so  great  a  power  as  in  this  country. 
Here  everything  is  settled  by  the  counting  of 
noses.  We  believe  that  the  unenlightened  opin- 
ion of  the  riff-raff  of  great  cities  is  a  much  safer 
guide  for  us  to  follow  than  the  mature  and  in- 
telligent judgment  of  the  educated  few.  We 
are  enthusiastic  upholders  of  the  jury  system, 
and  see  no  reason  why  twelve  unwilling  and  ill- 
informed  jurymen  should  not  decide  some  of  the 


FRANCES  POWER  COBBE  191 

most  delicate  and  difficult  questions  involving  hu- 
man life,  liberty,  and  property.  One  of  the  most 
picturesque  spectacles  to  be  witnessed  in  the 
United  States  is  a  murder  trial  before  a  jury  of 
sorely  perplexed  tradesfolk.  Six  insanity  ex- 
perts on  one  side  swear  to  the  mental  soundness 
of  the  prisoner,  and  as  many  alienists  on  the 
other  side  take  their  solemn  oath  that  the  pris- 
oner is  raving  mad.  The  air  is  blue  with  affi- 
davits of  every  description.  The  medical  men 
ventilate  their  professional  jealousies,  and  the 
legal  luminaries  exchange  personalities.  No 
one  who  has  any  sense  of  humor  should  miss  the 
superb    spectacle. 

Just  what  will  be  the  result  of  the  Woman's 
Rights  Movement  it  is  difficult  to  determine,  but 
in  all  probability  the  entire  equality  of  the  sexes, 
when  once  established  (if  ever  it  is  established), 
will  take  some  shape  not  foreseen.  The  real 
enemies  of  the  enfranchisement  of  women  are  not 
men  but  the  women  themselves.  Miss  Cobbe  saw 
and  regretted  this.  She  found  most  of  her 
friends  and  supporters  in  this  and  many  other 
social  and  political  reforms  among  men.  Only 
a  few  days  before  her  death  she  wrote  me  a  long 
and  earnest  letter  in  which  was  expressed  the 
suspicion   that   the   few  women   who   had   found 


192  A  FREE  LANCE 

their  way  into  the  ministry  had  taken  up  preach- 
ing and  religious  instruction  not  through  any 
moral  and  internal  pressure,  nor  yet  through 
any  sincere  desire  for  the  work  in  itself,  but 
from  a  wish  to  be  of  service  to  their  husbands, 
who  were  most  of  them  clergymen.  One  has 
only  to  read  the  paper  on  "The  Fitness  of 
Women  for  the  Ministry  of  Religion"  in  her 
book,  "The  Peak  in  Darien,"  to  see  how  deep 
was  her  feeling  in  this  matter. 

In  the  United  States  a  few  gifted  women  like 
Miss  Anna  Oliver,  Mrs.  Van  Cott,  Miss  Olympia 
Brown,  Mrs.  Hannaford,  Mrs.  Celia  Burleigh, 
Mrs.  Livermore,  Miss  Anna  Dickinson,  and 
Mrs.  Julia  Ward  Howe  were  public  speakers; 
and  some  of  these  had  prefixed  to  their  names 
the  sacred  "Reverend."  But  not  one  of  them 
had  ministered  ten,  or  even  eight,  years  accept- 
ably to  any  one  church.  I  remember  well  Mrs. 
Celia  Burleigh.  She  was  a  lady  of  rare  culture 
and  charming  presence;  a  good  speaker,  but 
wanting  in  physical  force.  She  preached  for  a 
brief  season  in  Connecticut,  but  died  not  long 
after  entering  the  ministry.  Miss  Olympia 
Brown  preached  three  years  for  a  Universalist 
church  at  Bridgeport,  in  the  same  State,  and 
then  retired.     Mrs.  Van  Cott  was  regarded  as 


FRANCES  POWER  COBBE  193 

an    eloquent    speaker,    but    her    ministry    could 
hardly  be  called  successful. 

The  closing  years  of  Miss  Cobbe's  life  were 
devoted  to  the  anti-vivisection  campaign.  This, 
it  has  been  said,  was  her  "literary  ruin,"  and  in 
a  certain  way  it  was,  for  it  circumscribed  her  field 
of  vision,  and  lessened  her  interest  in  the  great 
world  of  human  affairs.  It  gave  to  all  her  men- 
tal processes  an  intensity  that  in  a  poorer  na- 
ture might  have  degenerated  into  vulgar  fanati- 
cism. She  founded  a  "Society  for  the  Protec- 
tion of  Animals  from  Vivisection,"  and  she  was 
its  secretary  for  ten  years.  She  wrote  one  hun- 
dred and  seventy-three  tracts  against  vivisection, 
and  published  countless  articles  on  the  subject 
in  papers  and  magazines.  Her  work  for  ani- 
mals was  in  keeping  with  her  work  in  other  di- 
rections. It  always  reflected  the  beautiful  light 
of  a  strong  and  noble  character.  It  may  be 
that  her  views  were  in  some  ways  extreme,  but 
the  cause  was  a  worthy  one,  and  she  championed 
it  in  a  knightly  spirit  that  won  the  admiration 
of  both  friend  and  foe. 

Frances  Power  Cobbe  died  on  April  5,  1904, 
at  her  home  in  Hengwrt,  Dolgelly,  North  Wales. 
She  had  risen  early  in  the  morning  and  had 
opened  the  shutters  to  her  window.     As  she  was 


194  A  FREE  LANCE 

walking  across  the  room,  swiftly  and  painlessly 
the  summons  came  in  the  way  she  had  hoped  it 
would  come.  Her  funeral  took  place  Friday, 
April  8,  and  was  conducted  according  to  direc- 
tions which  were  written  in  her  will.  Prior  to 
the  embalming  of  her  body  the  carotid  artery 
was  severed  by  a  surgeon.  This  she  had  di- 
rected as  a  precaution  against  premature  burial, 
though  of  course  the  process  of  embalming  must 
have  rendered  such  an  operation  unnecessary. 
She  had  decided  upon  the  place  of  burial,  which 
was  to  be  close  to  the  grave  of  her  dear  friend, 
Miss  Lloyd,  near  "the  little  ivy-cornered  church 
of  Llanellt}Td."  The  churchyard  and  the  grave- 
stones that  everywhere  dot  its  rich  velvety  sod 
were  clearly  visible  from  her  window,  and  she 
often  pointed  to  the  beautiful  roses  that  flour- 
ished so  luxuriantly  over  her  friend's  grave. 
The  cemetery  (if  such  it  may  be  called — it  is  an 
English  churchyard)  looks  across  the  tidal 
Mawddach  towards  Hengwrt,  Miss  Lloyd's  an- 
cestral, and  Miss  Cobbe's  adopted  home,  where 
for  many  years  the  two  friends  lived  side  by  side. 
At  the  home  a  prayer  was  offered,  and  Miss 
Cobbe's  favorite  hymn,  "Nearer,  My  God,  to 
Thee,"  was  sung.     The  Reverend  J.  Estlin  Car- 


FRANCES  POWER  COBBE         195 

penter,  the  distinguished  Biblical  critic,  who  was 
a  personal  friend  of  Miss  Cobbe,  conducted  the 
services.  The  coffin  was  carried  to  the  grave 
in  no  dark  and  mournful  hearse,  but  in  one  of 
Miss  Cobbe's  open  carriages,  drawn  by  her  own 
horses,  driven  by  her  coachman.  No  crape  was 
worn,  and  instead  of  the  usual  floral  decorations 
for  funerals,  the  coffin  was  covered  by  a  mass  of 
red  roses.  In  her  will  she  had  written,  "I  desire 
that  my  coffin  be  not  made  of  oak  or  of  any 
durable  wood;  but,  on  the  principle  of  earth-to- 
earth  burials,  of  the  lightest  and  most  perishable 
materials,  merely  sufficient  to  carry  my  body  de- 
cently to  the  grave,  and  without  any  ornament 
or  inscription  whatever.  I  desire  to  be  carried 
to  Llanelltyd  Cemetery,  not  on  a  funeral  hearse 
or  on  men's  shoulders,  but  in  one  or  another  of 
my  own  carriages,  driven  by  my  coachman,  at 
his  usual  pace.  And  I  desire  that  neither  then 
nor  at  any  other  time  may  my  friends  or  serv- 
ants wear  mourning  for  me." 

Her  beautiful  spirit  has  passed  into  the  un- 
seen world,  of  which  she  longed  to  know  more, 
and  of  which  we  all  know  so  little.  She  has  left 
us  books  of  rare  worth,  full  of  deep  thinking 
and  of  the  allurement  and  charm  of  a  vigorous 


196  A  FREE  LANCE 

yet  graceful  style,  and  alive  with  hope  and  prom- 
ise. Few  women  have  lived  so  large  and  so  rich 
a  life  in  the  two  worlds  of  intellectual  activity 
and  philanthropic  endeavor. 


AL.1JJ  UJS1MA 

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